27th June 2009
Four activists from environmental action group Climate Rush glued themselves around a statue in the lobby of the Houses of Parliament today. Once fixed they spoke about the impacts of climate change, to the surprise of MPs, civil servants and tourists.
At 10am three women and one man, dressed in white like the original Suffragettes and wearing red ‘climate’ sashes, used superglue to stick their hands around the sword carried by a statue of Viscount Falkland. Exactly one hundred years earlier (27th April 1909) a Suffragette, Marjory Hume, chained herself to this sword to protest for women’s suffrage. Police were forced to cut the stone sword to set her free. One hundred years on, the police had to rely on solvent to unstuck the protesters.
Rusher Cadi St John, a twenty year old student at Bristol University said:
‘A hundred years ago women were forced to break the law to have their voice heard in Parliament. A hundred years on and nothing’s changed. I’m in my first year at uni and I’m almost ready to give up and become a full-time campaigner about climate change. Like so many of my generation I’m terrified about what the future holds, but instead of environmental action Labour promises new coal fired power stations and a third runway at Heathrow. This is the only way I can make myself heard.’
Chris Kitchen, another rusher and a secretary for The Institute of Education said:
‘We don’t want to wake up to a climate crisis which will be caused by the same political cowardice and chronic short-termism as the economic crisis. It’s now or never. The politicians need to stop relying on unproven technology and get stuck into real climate solutions.’
Last week Ed Miliband gave the go ahead to a new generation of coal fired power stations, which will use unproven CCS technology to reduce emissions. If this technology fails it will lock us into a carbon intensive energy future and make it impossible for Britain to make emissions cuts. Climate scientists predict that there will be no summer Arctic ice as early as next year. This could be the beginning of runaway climate change.