Read: Choose Oil / Choose LifeRobert Alcock

  Some thoughts on art, direct action, and addiction  The opinions in this article are mine and don’t represent those of Extinction Rebellion Scotland or anyone else.   You might have seen that last week, three XR activists climbed onto the roof of the Scottish Parliament building and dropped a banner reading “Choose Oil or […]

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Read: Tree Girl – A Short StoryClare Hobba

  Each morning, I file my vlog.  The leaves rustle round me and the squirrels curse at me but I hold up my phone and talk loudly at it. Yesterday, for the first time, I didn’t feel like it.  Not much had changed so it seemed a shame to disturb the tree top talking about […]

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Read: Trafalgar Sq RhapsodySusana Medina

The writer Susana Medina.

  To James ‘Iggy’ Fox   We are nature. We are science. We turn grief into action. We protest and we sing and we play and we dance. We do so for life. We are mourning the earth. We are mourning us. We are re-inventing the city. We are the grief-stricken carnival spirit that marks […]

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Read: Feathers & BonesRebecca Faulkner

  Feathers & Bones     There are many carcasses,  hundreds of thousands falling  out of the sky in a two-mile  stretch inland, just in front  of my house. Over a dozen      flycatchers, swallows and warblers,  a volume of deaths both common  and sensitive, inexplicable. Before  dying to reach winter grounds three billion […]

Read More… from Read: Feathers & BonesRebecca Faulkner

Read: Q&A with Diana McCaulayDiana McCaulay and Monique Roffey

Diana McCaulay portrait by Jonathan Chambers

  Diana McCaulay, Jamaican environmentalist and author of Daylight Come, (Peepal Tree Press), spoke with Trinidadian author and Writers Rebel co-founder, Monique Roffey. They talked about about ‘Goatillas’, a carbon Neutral Caribbean, deadly heat, and Climate Change as bedfellow with our Colonial past.     Diana, congratulations on publishing such a relevant book for our […]

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Read: In the Shadow of the StormRichard Georges

Portrait of the writer Richard Georges.

  The day before the sky swallowed us, I sat in my car in the parking lot of one of the island’s crowded supermarkets and listened to the radio for storm updates. The 11 o’clock was late, gospel music blared hope on the AM channels and an aimless circle spun blindly on my phone. Bobby’s […]

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Read: Three PoemsSue Hubbard

The poet Sue Hubbard, smiling.

  Sakura   Not Yoshino in April  when blossom-fringed branches bow towards the ground in prayer  beneath an early moon illuminating the frailty of  white clouds  where friends gather  to sip sake and petals flutter  to the ground pale as moths but deep January in Islington’s  Highbury Fields where these tender buds   this early […]

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Read: Tufton Street – Fiery Words Under a Police HelicopterCharlotte Du Cann

Charlotte Du Cann speaking outside 55 Tufton Street.

  The next revolution – World War III – will be waged inside your head. It will be a guerrilla information war fought not in the sky or on the streets, not in the forests or even around scarce resources of the earth, but in newspapers and magazines, on the radio, on TV and in […]

Read More… from Read: Tufton Street – Fiery Words Under a Police HelicopterCharlotte Du Cann

Watch: Paul Hilder lays out the facts of the matterPaul Hilder

  Paul Hilder was one of twenty speakers at 55 Tufton Street. His was the most forensic attack on Climate Change denial. After watching this, you’ll be left in no doubt how we’re being played, and who we’re being played by. If you feel strongly about the climate and ecological emergency, join us and help […]

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Watch: Jay Griffiths asks – How qualified are the Climate Change deniers?Jay Griffiths

  As part of the ‘Tell No Lies About Climate Change’ action at 55 Tufton Street, Jay Griffiths anatomised the qualifications of those spreading confusion and disinformation about the state of the planet. It’s funny and horrifying in equal measure. If you feel strongly about the climate and ecological emergency, join us and help make […]

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Watch: Zadie Smith on grief, protest and liesZadie Smith

Photo of Zadie Smith speaking at Tufton Street by Kelly Hill.

  On 2 September 2022, Zadie Smith joined Writers Rebel at 55 Tufton Street, and delivered a speech that has already been shared and watched thousands of times. This is a defining moment in the struggle for climate justice. If you feel strongly about the climate and ecological emergency, join us and help make a […]

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Read: #LiesLiesLiesJessica Townsend

Writer and activist Jessica Townsend.

  I first got involved with Extinction Rebellion when I was researching a novel set in 2030. As I read the science, waves of emotion crashed over me: anger, dismay, grief. I had a lot of questions: why hadn’t I heard any of this before? Why wasn’t the crisis on the front pages? Why, too, […]

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Read: Now and never: a note of reflection for the September RebellionRupert Read

Let’s take a moment, this moment, to reflect upon where we are and why, before we launch into the urgent matter of September.   Why ‘Extinction Rebellion’? Because when your government is driving you and your family over a cliff, it’s no longer a legitimate government. Rebellion against it is permitted – indeed, it’s required. […]

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Read: I dropped out of school to protest the Climate EmergencyBlue Sandford

Blue Sandford at an Extinction Rebellion demonstration.

  I did my GCSEs last year, a few weeks after the April Rebellion. I just scraped through – when you’ve spent two weeks on the barricades watching people being carried away by the police and hearing scary facts about the future of the planet, exams don’t seem that important. Why do I care how […]

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Read: Green GuiltAnouchka Grose

Photograph of Anouchka Grose, smiling.

  Much is made of the relationships, the intersections, the similarities and differences between various feelings and emotional states. How do you tell envy from jealousy? Why does love so readily turn to hate? What are the tonal variations between shame and embarrassment, fear and anxiety, guilt and remorse?  I find myself churning over these […]

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Read: Blog From the Treetops in the Roald Dahl WoodsAmy Caitlin

  ‘On a hill above the valley there was a wood.  In the wood there was a huge tree.  Under the tree there was a hole.  In the hole lived Mr Fox and Mrs Fox and their four Small Foxes.’    These are the opening lines of Fantastic Mr Fox by Roald Dahl. It’s July […]

Read More… from Read: Blog From the Treetops in the Roald Dahl WoodsAmy Caitlin

Read: William Morris and the Art of DissentClare Conway

William Morris wearing an Extinction Rebellion badge.

  It was a windswept Saturday afternoon in early February this year, as I huddled by the doorway of the Coach House at Kelmscott House, Hammersmith waiting to meet the writer Zakia Carpenter-Hall. “… the wallpaper man.” A snippet from a breeze-snatched conversation interrupted my thoughts. William Morris: Wallpaper Man. Somewhat irrationally the words irked […]

Read More… from Read: William Morris and the Art of DissentClare Conway

Read: On RiskA L Kennedy

  Dundee, where I grew up, is currently among the world’s coolest small cities. It has a V&A and hotels surrounding the V&A, not just to mask the city centre from visitors. In my day, Dundee was post-industrial, reliant on a few failing employers, full of health and social risks, particularly for the poor. But […]

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Read: Q&A With Radio 4 ‘Book of the Week’ Author James CantonJames Canton

The author James Canton standing in front of the astonishing width of a large oak tree.

  Your new book is about a very special tree and – perhaps – it’s also about our relationship to time, human time versus ‘nature time’? Could you tell us a bit more about what inspired you to write it? Has your relationship with this tree changed the way you perceive other trees? Can you […]

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Read: For a Coming ExtinctionPascale Petit

  For a Coming Extinction   (after W. S. Merwin)     You whom we have named Charger, Challenger, Great King, and Noor the shining one,   now that you are at the brink of extinction, I am writing to those of you   who have reached the black groves of the sky, where you […]

Read More… from Read: For a Coming ExtinctionPascale Petit