Reignite

Press release from Cardiff Extinction Rebellion:  Extinction Rebellion Cardiff welcomes Cardiff Council's decision to declare a Climate Emergency, but warns that urgent action is needed more than words. An emergency requires an emergency response. Missing from the motion is the sense of urgency the situation demands. The following amendments could have been put forward to rectify this: a). Carbon emission reduction targets are set of all emissions from the region, not just from public buildings etc, and b). A timescale for reaching carbon net-zero is set. Many other cities and regions have committed to declaring a Climate Emergency and have strengthened their declarations by committing to a time frame within which they agree to have developed a strategy to reach their aim of reducing carbon emissions to net-zero by 2030. These include Bristol, Edinburgh, Carmarthenshire and Bath and North East Somerset, amongst others, who have all committed to reporting within six months to ...

There is about climate change, but it's also about a lot of other things. The greatest barrier in dealing with climate change is not climate change denial, but climate change gradualism. Most politicians, most business leaders, heck most leaders in the fossil fuel industry say, "Yes, climate change is important, and we are dealing with it, and here's the plan for dealing with it, slowly reducing carbon emissions and getting to a zero carbon economy in 2050 or 2060 or 2070 if we can manage it." This plan would be disastrous for the world. When it comes to climate change winning slowly is the same thing as losing. (I've read someone else say this, I can't remember who, these ideas are not original). The challenge for activists is to be absolutely clear what the demands are, and unapologetic in demanding them. That's hard, psychologically. If you say, "Give me an apple" and someone gives you a quarter of an apple, there's an instinct t...

This video was part of an installation (see below) at an event called "COMMUNION" at Shift Cardiff, curated by Lumin Journal. It was an event "responding to communion, communication, language and text-art bringing together the city's radical/poetic/dialogue-driven agitators of the arts scene."

I've been reflecting recently on the journey I've been making from liberalism to radicalism, and how I'm beginning to see it as a necessary evolution if you're not going to get stuck in a kind of immature liberalism that fails to serve both you and the world. By liberalism I mean ideas and movements that emphasise personal freedom and not being restricted by the patterns of the past. By radicalism I mean ideas and movements that emphasise justice, solidarity, and liberation from oppression. Yes, I'm using broad categories here. Let me give an example. Let's talk about sexual liberation in a Western context for example. We can talk about women getting more agency over their bodies; gay and bi people being able to have sex with one another and marry one another; we can talk about the work of overcoming shame around sexuality. All of that is liberalism. It's good stuff. It's still ongoing. So we might ask the question "where next for sexu...