Make The Wave campaign warns that coastal communities are drowning in empty promises and calls on G7 leaders to ACT NOW on climate breakdown.
Today climate activists from scores of coastal communities around the UK have launched a wave of creative events aimed at highlighting rapidly rising sea levels, ahead of the G7 Summit.
Starting in Scotland and continuing along the coast down to Cornwall this four-day creative campaign will ripple around the UK’s coastline to ‘Make The Wave’, sending a clear message to G7 leaders that people in communities vulnerable to rising sea levels and flooding are demanding urgent action to tackle the climate crisis.
Organised by over 100 Extinction Rebellion Groups, this tsunami of events will bring together climate activists, other concerned environmental groups, friends, neighbours, local politicians, grandmothers and children, to create beautiful, imaginative, informative and symbolic events.
Drowning
On Findhorn beach, in Forres, Scotland XR activists are dressing up in hand-made Edwardian period costumes to have dinner and drinks at a table on the beach. As they dine, the group will be submerged by the rising tide to satirise what they group claims is the political class’s inaction on climate change.
The table cloth banner will read “Drowning in Promises”.
In Cardigan 'King Canute' will leave the lifeboat station to be carried to the sea where he and his attendants will try to hold back the rising tide, symbolising the utter folly of the government’s greenwash and its continued support for fossil fuel industries in the face of climate breakdown.
In Folkestone activists and the community will come together to hold a procession around the Harbour Arm and along the boardwalk to Mermaid Beach led by the famous Red Rebels, Blue Rebels, music and contemporary dance performances in and around the artworks.
They will then walk into the sea, symbolising the human race facing our seemingly inevitable Climate Crisis and Sea Level Rise.
Communities
Scores of other communities will take part in similar events around the coast. Each event will be a non-disruptive and non-violent celebration of creativity and will share the latest local and global climate science so that their communities can come together to discuss and prepare for the Climate Crisis, while building resilience to local problems.
Also taking part are XR Groups along the coasts of Germany, Spain, The Netherlands and across the oceans in The Pacific Islands and Indonesia, to raise awareness of the climate and ecological emergency and the resulting sea level rise along their coasts.
Make The Wave campaign warns that coastal communities are drowning in empty promises and calls on G7 leaders to ACT NOW on climate breakdown.
Make The Wave is part of a wider set of G7-related actions. It sends a clear signal, to Boris Johnson and G7 summit delegates representing several billion citizens, that ordinary people demand greater, immediate action to tackle the climate and ecological emergency.
People across the world are calling for action. Solomon Yeo, a law student from the Pacific Islands said: ‘The seas here are boiling and creating ever more dangerous and destructive cyclones’.
Marcelle Coburn, age 59 of Herne Bay, co-founder of Make The Wave said, “The G7 summit and the Cop 26 later this year are both an unmissable opportunity to put pressure on world leaders to take real action to tackle climate change. As I am unable to go to either, being the sole carer for my elderly father I felt compelled to contribute from a distance somehow. So along with another XR activist, who I have still never actually met, we created Make the Wave. Entirely using communication technology. Each and every person taking part over the next 4 days Genuinely has had enough of the greenwash our governments are pedalling and want to leave a world the future generations can live in. I hope they are listening”.
Emissions
Helen Lindon, 70, Folkestone artist & activist and co-founder of Make The Wave said: “The action’s focus is on the resulting rise in sea level - we are already drowning in promises, now we demand action. Building higher sea defences is not the answer. Tackling emissions, especially our continued dependence on fossil fuels, is what is needed. Ending our continued dependence on fossil fuels, protecting and restoring our natural world is the only way.”
She added: “Governments have known for decades the damage Fossil Fuels do environmentally and have carried on subsidising them. 97 percent of climate scientists agree that they are the main cause of our inevitable catastrophic climate crisis. Act now. I am fighting for our grandchildren’s future.”
This Author- Carol Millet is part of the Extinction Rebellion media team.
