Extinction Rebellion Warwick District (XRWD) have been well-represented at the April 2022 Rebellion, which is currently underway.

On the 15th January we protested at Barclays Bank Leamington, at their greenwashing.  Barclays has invested $145 billion dollars in fossil fuels since the Paris agreement of 2015, yet claims “It’s our ambition to be a net zero bank by 2050. We’re already net zero emissions from our own operations..." blah blah blah.  Join us in demanding action.  We brought mops and cleaning gear to symbolise the greenwash and business attire.  Read the letter and see photos below.

Extinction Rebellion activists staged a die-in at Leamington Town Hall on Saturday the 13th of November, highlighting our disappointment at the COP26 climate change summit, which came to an end in Glasgow on the same day.

The Impossible Rebellion has been happening in London since August 23rd and so far at least 12 local rebels have taken part.

Midway through the Rebellion, inspired by another rebel from home, I joined the chat group for arrestee support. It was the end of the day of ‘Imagine the Impossible’ at the Science Museum (where I’d spent the afternoon speaking to the public from my ‘Crisis Talks’ table and, as I’d left, a road blockade had been forming nearby) and the action during the evening service at St. Paul’s Cathedral.

Following on from our success at Art in the Park we were out on the streets again outside Leamington Town Hall trying to engage the public in the Climate Emergency debate by highlighting the dire findings of the IPPC report. This action will be on the 2nd Saturday of each month, so the next one is on 11th September. All are welcome to take part.

For the first time since the lockdown ended, XRWD delivered an incredible event in a public space. The basic concept was to have a “Parade Against Extinction” around Jephson Gardens, with rebels carrying placards highlighting the plight of endangered species in the U.K. and the world, and accompanied by art work produced by adults and children.

On Saturday 1^st May, members of XR Warwick District, along with people from a wide range of local organisations (including Keep Our NHS Public, Justice for Palestinians, Warwickshire National Education Union and Socialist Appeal), as well as youth climate strikers and others, formed a physically distanced protest of around 100 people to oppose the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts bill that has recently had its second reading in Parliament.

The 2021 XR UK Strategy is here!

2021 is a critical year for our planet. Time is running out and we need to explode out of lockdown with renewed energy. We also need to respond to the ways in which the world around us has changed.

This new strategy, called 'Do or Die', is the result of a bold experiment.

The Scientists Have Had Enough

We have understood the science of the climate crisis for over 30 years. The first IPCC report, where the world’s scientific community set out the scale of the problem, came out in 1990. But our governments chose not to act then, and still fail us today.

It is from that failure that protest movements like XR have sprung, and scientists have played a generous role in supporting our rebellion and offering us expertise. But, though integrated with our movement, they have tended to stay away from direct action.

Between November 2020 and February 2021, 30 local residents, selected by a process called sortition to give a group that was representative for the district, met to learn about the climate crisis from experts. After the 10 sessions, the participants decided which actions should be a priority in Warwick District and presented these as a recommendation to the District Council (which declared a climate emergency in 2019).

The UK Rebellion Of One team has taken the difficult decision to move our action date to 1st May.

While this may be disappointing and frustrating news to some, we are hearing many rebel voices across the UK who think a delay could make the action more powerful.