We as a planet have a massive environmental and ecological issue on our hands. We’re seeing unprecedented temperatures in Europe, floods and drought across Asia and ice caps are melting four times faster than we previously thought. Nepal had its first-ever tornado in recorded history this year.
If we continue with business as usual, we will see drought and desertification, crop failure and famine. We’ll see a climate refugee crisis, causing disruption unimaginably larger than that caused by the war in Syria, within the next decade or two.
If we continue business as usual, permafrost will melt, and everything it contains and preserves would be released, including massive amounts of methane, a major greenhouse gas, and deadly bacteria and viruses, like those which were otherwise eradicated centuries ago. If we were suddenly exposed to a deadly disease that has been preserved in ice for thousands of years, do you think we’d survive?
If we continue business as usual, we will continue to lose over 1 million square km of Arctic ice every decade, and if we don’t dramatically change our trajectory, the melting will only get faster. In 11 years at most, irreversible feedback loops will kick in, meaning the earth will start to warm itself uncontrollably.
This isn’t political. No matter what you believe, who you support or who you represent, this affects everyone.
If we continue with business as usual, we will see drought and desertification, crop failure and famine
Extinction Rebellion is a global environmental activism organisation, specifically aimed at demanding action from those in power who have the ability to implement change on a global level.
Our message is: While we can be reducing, reusing, recycling, Keep-Cupping, public-transport-using citizens, the impact of our efforts pale in comparison to the damage caused by the economic activities of those at the helm of our democracy, which only governments have power over.
I am no seasoned climate activist. I’m just a student who, only earlier this year, attended a public talk organised by Extinction Rebellion. I became one of a growing number of people who were shown just how serious the problem is, the terrifying truth of just how much worse it is set to get if we continue “business as usual”, and how exactly we have the best chance at changing our fate, for ourselves as well as for all generations to come.
I attended meetings and demonstrations since then, learning more and more about it all as I went along. Extinction Rebellion, I came to realise, is not just “a bunch of dirty hippies”.
Extinction Rebellion’s members are parents and grandparents, students and teachers, nurses and baristas, farmers and academics, politicians and musicians. I admired seeing people gladly sacrificing their time, energy and often even their clean criminal records. It gave me determination, and it gave me hope.
I want to share this determination, and hope, with as many people as possible, and I don’t want the work of these people already involved to go to waste. I’d rather not let the work of our entire species to date go to waste either, as we didn’t choose to save ourselves from ecological breakdown. But hey, that’s just a bonus.
Extinction Rebellion’s members are parents and grandparents, students and teachers, nurses and baristas, farmers and academics, politicians and musicians
It’s clear that I am not alone – there are many worldwide who feel like this.
There are also many like-minded people in Trinity. We believe in encouraging students to find the courage to fight for what is their future, and we will do that through holding talks, training sessions and opportunities for students to mobilise for direct action, by setting up an Extinction Rebellion affinity group for Trinity.
A lot of people believe that there’s just nothing we can do, and that we are ultimately doomed anyway. I’m not going to preach blind optimism or flower the principle truth that we are, globally, fairly fucked.
However, there is a chance we can convince those who have the power to change our fate to do so. There is a chance that it’s not too late to preserve our world and mitigate the effects of the incoming disaster.
I’m trying to help increase that chance, and I want you to do the same. That change isn’t going to happen without you, or me, or your friends, lecturers and parents. There’s only power in numbers. Those numbers need to include you.
