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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Read More… from Read: Q&A with Diana McCaulayDiana McCaulay and Monique Roffey
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 […]
Read More… from Read: In the Shadow of the StormRichard Georges
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 […]
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
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 […]
Read More… from Watch: Paul Hilder lays out the facts of the matterPaul Hilder
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 […]
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 […]
Read More… from Watch: Zadie Smith on grief, protest and liesZadie Smith
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, […]
I lost my heart in Leafless Year. I like the sound of that phrase, and it’s very nearly true. Her name was Emmanuelle. Everyone called her Nelly but I preferred her full name and she let me use it, every Saturday in our afternoon drama club. She was very slender, with brown hair cut […]
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. […]
Read More… from Read: Now and never: a note of reflection for the September RebellionRupert Read
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 […]
Read More… from Read: I dropped out of school to protest the Climate EmergencyBlue Sandford
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 […]
‘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
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
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 […]
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 […]
Read More… from Read: Q&A With Radio 4 ‘Book of the Week’ Author James CantonJames Canton