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Writers Rebel’s Paint the Land project was launched with the help of Booker prize-winning writer Ben Okri, artist-activists Ackroyd & Harvey, Capital Choir, Damon Albarn and countless dedicated volunteers. Okri’s message to world governments, “Can’t you hear the future weeping? Our love must save the world” was grown on an 16x4m carpet of living grass […]
This speech was given by Ben Okri at Writers Rebel’s Paint The Land launch event on Friday 25th June, 2021. When Writers Rebel asked me to come up with a few words that could speak to a world on the verge of environmental catastrophe, I had a minor crisis of my own. The facts […]
Walking along the street the other day, I overheard a fragment of a conversation. A mother with a pushchair was saying confidently said to her friend, ‘You know me, I’d do anything to protect my kids’. It’s a variation of a phrase I have often heard but, just recently, the urge to interrupt and […]
Read More… from Parents for a Future – how do we broaden the movement?Rupert Read
John Richard Granville Stevens — Granville to everyone who knows him — is standing in the field behind his farmhouse, showing me his roots. While he’s doing this, I’m thinking about Franz Kafka’s short story “In the Penal Settlement”. Farmer Granville Stevens standing in one of his cover crops. [Photo credit: JAMES FLINT] […]
Beth Pitts interviews Alexandra Narváez, an indigenous Kofán defender from Ecuador’s northern Amazon region. Alexandra’s community of Sinangoe is famous for winning a historic legal battle against gold mining in 2018, which protected 79,000 acres of mega-biodiverse primary rainforest and the headwaters of one of Ecuador’s most important rivers. As the first woman to […]
Read More… from Watch: Interview with Amazon Defender Alexandra NarváezBeth Pitts
Beth Pitts entrevista a Alexandra Narváez, una defensora indígena Kofán de la región norte de la Amazonía del Ecuador. La comunidad de Alexandra, Sinangoe, es famosa por ganar una batalla legal histórica contra la minería de oro en 2018, que protegió mas que 30.000 hectáreas de selva primaria megabiodiverso y las cabeceras de […]
Read More… from Ver: Entrevista con Defensora Amazónica Alexandra NarváezBeth Pitts
Terry Tempest Williams and Eva Aridjis took part in Writers Rebels’ Insectageddon event on May 24th 2021, at which they both spoke piercingly about the fate of the Monarch Butterfly. In this video, we share Terry’s contribution. Known for her impassioned and lyrical prose, Terry Tempest Williams is the author of the environmental literature […]
Read More… from Who Breaks a Butterfly Upon a Wheel?Terry Tempest Williams and Eva Aridjis
It was last August, at around three in the morning when my phone rang. I lay in bed and listened, the darkness spreading around me. Through the phone, Tania ‘Nena’ Baltazar wept. Our home is on fire. “Nuestra casa se está quemando.” I could hear the crackling of flames. I could smell it, feel the […]
The Names of Trees I I should know the names of trees and birds, and where to find them. I should have this, poised to give, to any who might need it. Dirt should sit, be lodged, tattooed, beneath my fingernails. And I should know its feel, and warmth, and temperament […]
The Prayer of the Common Newt In a muddy pond, in the outskirts of Clydebank, a mother, with over two hundred eggs inside her, is beginning the process of giving birth. Over the next few weeks, each day she will deposit about a dozen of them not on a folded over leaf, […]
On 22 April, XR co-founder Simon Bramwell and six other rebels appeared at the Southwark Crown Court, charged with causing 25K worth of criminal damage to Shell’s London headquarters. In a historic ruling, six of the defendants were found not guilty despite admitting to criminal damage, and the judge indicating that the law pointed to […]
Read More… from The shaping of History: THE PEOPLE VERSUS SHELLSimon Bramwell
Tom Bullough was arrested during the September rebellion for failing to comply with a section 14 of the Public Order Act 1986. This is the statement he read in his defence at the City of London magistrates’ court. He received a nine month suspended sentence and was ordered to pay costs. I would like […]
Read More… from On behalf of myself and my children…Tom Bullough's Defence Speech: Edit
In June 2019, Carola Rackete, captain of the boat Sea-Watch 3, entered the port of Lampedusa and thereby defied the new Italian law against entering territorial waters. By doing so, she saved the lives of forty refugees who, in the intense heat, were suffering from thirst and threatening to throw themselves overboard – though […]
Katherine Angel has described your new novel, Cold New Climate, as tackling both “personal and global catastrophe”. Can you tell us a bit more about the novel and how you approached these themes? The novel came out of a sense of curiosity about myopia and entitlement. At the outset, Lydia is dissatisfied and bored in […]
Read More… from Q & A with Isobel WohlIncluding an extract from her debut novel, Cold New Climate
Poetry Rebellion is described as poems and prose to “rewild the spirit.” Can you tell us a little more about the anthology, what brought it about and who is in it? What was your criteria for selecting contributors? Batsford Books, part of Pavilion Books that published my How To See Nature, asked if I’d like […]
Read More… from Q & A with Paul Evans, Editor of Poetry RebellionIncluding featured poems
Mexican poet, novelist, environmental activist and journalist Homero Aridjis makes an impassioned appeal on behalf of the vaquita, the world’s rarest marine mammal, as it balances on the brink of extinction. Please sign this petition to show your support. […]
Read More… from Save Mexico’s Vaquita PorpoiseHomero Aridjis
Tell us about what’s happening at Ardee bog, and why you are campaigning to stop it. Ardee Bog, in Ireland’s County Louth, is threatened by an absurd infrastructure project. If a proposed road, the N52 Ardee Bypass, is allowed to proceed in its current form it will cut through Ardee Bog and its […]
Read More… from Read: Trees breathe out. We breathe in.Katie Holten
Hau kea white snow, snow (Hawaiian) In this tropical archipelago, snow is most likely to be found on a simmering crater. In winter the temperature at the summits of Mauna Loa, Haleakala and Mauna Kea – the state’s three tallest volcanoes – drops to below freezing. Mauna Kea means ‘white mountain’ and it […]
Weather Gods I Tired of burnings, bulldozers, charred lungs, Chaac the Rain God decamps from Mayan rainforests, rides the bloated trade winds, comes to reign over the Old World. Days on end the swollen earth has swallowed till it’s soft as blotting-paper. The sun is an aspirin dissolving in a gauze of […]
When the news finally came that the democratic candidate Joe Biden had won the state of Pennsylvania, putting him over the 270 electoral college votes needed to win the United States presidential election, our household cheered! I ran outside – not to the streets because where we live there are none – but because […]
It was the Prussian polymath, scientist and writer Alexander von Humboldt (1767-1835) who paved the way for biogeography – the study of species and ecosystems across space and time – becoming established as an empirical science. The publications that emerged from his many expeditions are recognised as foundational to our present understanding of nature as a single great […]