Discuss with the XR activists lobbying at the local level

Chaired by Anita McNaught

We know there is going to be another global recession but we don’t know what will trigger it. We worry about epidemics and antibiotic resistance. We can see many farmers are struggling. We understand our soils are giving out. Many blame over population, others say greed is the problem. The rich are running to the hills but you can’t hide from the climate emergency. At some point, the stressors on our civilisation will become too great and it will break. Where are we most vulnerable? What are the biggest threats that we try not to think about? What could the domino effect be? Our planet is now a game of Jenga.

A conversation between Prof Rupert Read, Systems Collapse expert Dr. Nafeez Ahmed, and author and journalist David Wallace-Wells will discuss their views on the greatest threats we face.

Prof Rupert Read

Author of This Civilisation is Finished, Reader of Philosophy at the University of East Anglia, Green Party Campaigner and chair of the ecological think-tank, Greenhouse. Prof Read is also a spokesperson for Extinction Rebellion. 

Dr Nafeez Ahmed, 

Academic, journalist, change strategist and author of Failing States, Collapsing Systems: BioPhysical Triggers of Political Violence.

David Wallace-Wells 

Author of bestselling The Uninhabitable Earth and Guardian Journalist. 

Gavin Turk (b 1967) is a British born, international artist. He has pioneered many forms of contemporary British sculpture now taken for granted, including the painted bronze, the waxwork, the recycled art-historical icon and the use of rubbish in art.

Turk’s installations and sculptures deal with issues of authorship, authenticity and identity. Concerned with the ‘myth’ of the artist and the ‘authorship’ of a work, Turk’s engagement with this modernist, avant-garde debate stretches back to the ready-mades of Marcel Duchamp.

Turk has recently been commissioned to make several public sculptures including L'Âge d'Or (2016), sited on the south corner of the Press Centre building in the Olympic Park and Nail, a 12-meter sculpture at One New Change, next to St Paul’s cathedral, London, England.

Introduced by Anita McNaught 

Human society as we know it is coming to an end. The unfolding climate crisis will bring us global famines, mass human migration, devastating weather conditions, and in all likelihood, the breakdown of civilisation.  This is becoming the consensus. This panel will discuss how we need to shift our attention to deal with this future. ‘Deep Adaptation’, a phrase coined by Professor Jem Bendell, takes climate-induced societal collapse as now unpreventable. This pragmatic view of what lies ahead proposes instead that resilience, relinquishment, and restoration, is what we need to focus on for the human race to survive.

Prof Rupert Read

Author of This Civilisation is Finished, Reader of Philosophy at the University of East Anglia, Green Party Campaigner chair of the ecological think-tank, Greenhouse and spokesperson of Extinction Rebellion. 

Marc Lopatin. 

Marc has worked closely with Prof Jem Bendell co-authoring articles for the Huffington Post. Marc is also a former communications consultant for UN Environment and Royal Dutch Shell and journalist for papers such as the Guardian and the Independent. 

Roger Hallam. 

Roger is one of the founders of the most talked about direct action groups of the 21st century, Extinction Rebellion.

The environmental movement has surfaced in recent years as a white, middle-class-led movement, however for the last few decades people across the world, predominantly from the Global South, have been fighting the injustices of the western society, one that has brought the worst consequences of climate breakdown to the people who contribute to it the least, by those who contribute the most. Come and listen to members of Extinction Rebellion discuss how we can transform a white-majority led, white-majority issues campaign into an intersectional struggle that incorporates an understanding of and commitment to eradicating colonialism, structural racism, and other forms of systemic oppression that lie at the heart of our ecological crisis.

In the past year over 100,000 have joined Extinction Rebellion (XR) to rebel against the British Government for criminal in-action on the climate crisis. Why has this happened and what changes is XR bringing about? Are we going to be able to deal with the climate and ecological emergency and, if so, how? Roger Hallam, co-founder and a strategist for XR, will provide an outline of was has happened and what comes next.