Humanity 2.0

Your chance to be part of evolution

Extinction Rebellion publicity shot. Not the protest I attended

I recently went on an Extinction Rebellion march here in Winchester in the UK and it was a sobering occasion. Not the marching nor the noise nor the message shouted to the public at large. No, it was the number of people who turned up that day to march. There were barely more than fifty people, mostly older generation and concerned parents, who gathered for the event. In a city of over 45 thousand people, all we could manage to assemble and protest about the most dangerous crisis effecting our planet was less than 0.01% of its inhabitants. Worse still, more than half were from neighbouring towns and villages, so not even residents. As we shuffled our way down the high street we passed shoppers annoyed at the inconvenience of having us in their way. We ignored the derisory looks from the climate refuse-niks and tolerated the aloof condescension from the middle class supremacists; mildly amused by the antics of a gaggle of protestors and sneering at the home-made protest signs. A sobering experience indeed.

My epiphany that day was that despite years of warnings, numerous news events, berating protests and even David Attenborough gently chiding people into thinking about climate change, a vanishingly small number of people felt it necessary to do something about it. Looking around that day I saw crowds of mostly self-satisfied, apathetic…