Extinction Rebellion Continues

There is a decent write-up by Robert Stevens of the ongoing Extinction Rebellion (XR) in London (see "Police arrest over 1,000 climate change protesters in London"):

More than 1,000 people have been arrested in London over the last seven days of climate change protests organised by the Extinction Rebellion (XR) group.

Protesters continued to peacefully occupy public spaces in the capital, including Parliament Square, Piccadilly Circus, Waterloo Bridge, Oxford Circus and Marble Arch, despite mounting and provocative police arrests.

[snip]

On Sunday, those gathered at Marble Arch were addressed by 16-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg, whose protests outside Sweden’s parliament last year sparked the current wave of global strikes and demonstrations by school youth and students.

Thunberg, who will meet politicians, including Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn over the next week, said to a standing ovation, “Despite all the beautiful words and promises. … For way too long the politicians and people in power have got away with not doing anything at all to fight the climate crisis and ecological crisis …”

She added, “We are now facing an existential crisis, the climate crisis and ecological crisis which have never been treated as crises before, they have been ignored for decades.”

The New York Times has generally ignored XR, though it did publish one story by Ceylan Yeginsu, one of the newspaper's better reporters, last week. Yeginsu made note of the demands of the Extinction Rebellion:

The group has three core demands of the British government: to “tell the truth” by declaring a climate and ecological emergency; to reduce carbon emissions to zero by 2025; and to create a citizens’ assembly to lead on climate issues.

[snip]

Whether intentional or not, their cause received a lift on Wednesday from Mark Carney, the governor of the Bank of England, who warned the financial sector that it faced an existential threat from climate change and urged international banks to take immediate steps to prepare.

“As financial policymakers and prudential supervisors we cannot ignore the obvious physical risks before our eyes,” Mr. Carney wrote in a joint article with Francois Villeroy, the governor of the Banque De France, that was published in The Guardian newspaper.

Citing the threats to insurance companies and banks from the recent spate of storms, floods, fires and other natural disasters, he said, “Climate Change is a global problem, which requires global solutions, in which the whole financial sector has a central role to play.”