Normalising disasters whilst criminalising protesters is no way to tackle climate crisis

The news of climate catastrophe seems to be coming fast and furious as the year progresses.

At the start of the year there were the fires spreading across Australia causing devastation.

There has been much other climate related devastation caused across the world.

In the UK, recently there have been the floods in various parts of the country, as well as the damage caused by high winds.

All of these events underline how brutally nature can turn – this should be obvious to anyone taking a look at these and other events. Nature will not wait until it is convenient to humanity to get its priorities sorted out, a time when the issue can be brought off the back burner because there is some money available to address the mounting problems.

The activities of the likes of Extinction Rebellion continue to raise the issues, in an often dramatic and inconvenient way for leaders across the world.

But those leaders continue to not prioritise action to address the crisis. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned 18 months ago that the world had 12 years to keep warming below 1.5 degrees. Failure to do so will have serious consequences. But what has been done, the world continues to hurtle toward 3 to 4 degrees warming. The actions are not being taken.

Worse still, there seems to be a pincer movement to normalise climate catastrophe, whilst at the same time criminalising those who call for action to address the crisis.

So, the TV screens and newspapers are full of pictures of devastation from the Australian fires or those flooded out in the north of England. How long before this is just taken as the norm, nothing to be done, nothing can be done about it. Catastrophe overload.

Then, there have been the reports of police classifying groups like Extinction Rebellion in the terror category.

This is not a sign of action but one of shooting the messenger. Stop those who seek to halt the very activities that are seeing the climate crisis career out of control. Put your heads in the sand and continue as though it is not happening.

If the world is to be saved from climate catastrophe, including biodiversity destruction, then serious actions need to be taken. It is no answer at all to target those who seek to raise these issues, whilst hoping that constant exposure to the devastation will eventually numb citizens into acceptance and silence regarding the devastation of the planet.