Ben Dolbear Reveals Stanley Johnson's Soft Spot For The Growing Movement
Photo by Joël de Vriend
Stanley Johnson, the father of Prime Minister Boris Johnson, has backed Extinction Rebellion (XR), the strikers who have shut down London to draw attention to the climate emergency.
This comes the day after the Prime Minister branded the activists ‘uncooperative crusties […] littering the road’ who are occupying ‘hemp-smelling bivouacs’.
Stanley Johnson, who served as a Conservative member of the European Parliament for Hampshire East between 1979 and 1984, has authored several books about the environment and climate change, including Environmental Policy of the European Communities and The Warming.
The Prime Minister, on the other hand, has been criticised for consistently failing to address the climate crisis, and for presenting ‘tokenistic’ environmental policies in this week’s Queen’s Speech.
What Stanley Johnson Says:
Speaking to London activists on Wednesday, Stanley Johnson said, ‘[f]rom tiny acorns, big movements spring. We have been moving far too slowly on the climate change issue.’ And in an apparent dig at his son’s comments at a book launch, he went on to say, ‘I regard it as a tremendous compliment to be called an uncooperative crusty.’
The current wave of protests, which have been backed by all major opposition parties in Parliament, began on Monday 7th October when XR promised to shut down major routes into London in an attempt to raise awareness of the immediacy of the emergency which the UN have warned requires urgent action now.
Time To Act
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, there are twelve years in which we can limit the ‘catastrophe’ of climate change, and even one half of a degree increase in global temperatures will ‘risks of drought, floods, extreme heat and poverty for hundreds of millions of people’.
Early this morning, activists were ordered to disband their lawful congregation in Trafalgar Square, and Scotland Yard have said that the Autumn Uprising must ‘cease’. This comes as the Guardian praise Extinction Rebellion for their important role in enabling the public to wake up to ‘the gravity of their cause’
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