 Hello and thanks to Extinction Rebellion for the invitation to speak today. Two years ago in London the International Rebellion brought attention from the British media and the British public to the climate crisis in a way that I had never seen before in 30 years of working on the environment. People in my field, corporate sustainability, were saying many of them for the first time, while this is an existential crisis and we need government to lead on systemic change. So two years on we can see that that has not happened and I think that's because in all the countries of the world that I know the established elites have not supported the idea of really radical change in the economic systems which continue to push you, me, everyone towards contributing to the destruction of our planet. So I think that really means we need to start talking about just how bad things are and what that means in terms of what's coming our way, whatever we do now. That was already in my mind two years ago when I spoke at the opening of the Rebellion in Oxford Circus. We gather and rebel not with a vision of a fairytale future where we fix the climate but because it's right to do what we can, it's right to try and reduce harm, it's right to try and save what we can and it's right to try and live the way we believe in. To try and come back to sanity and love because the truth is we're scared but we're brave enough to say so. The truth is we're grieving but we're proud enough to say so. The truth is we're traumatised but we're open enough to say so. Angry but we are calm enough to gather and to call others to join us. After the speech a reporter from Channel 4 News came up to me and asked to interview me and I declined. The reason at the time was that I didn't feel comfortable about my understanding of the future being communicated in just a few seconds through TV so people would hear at home that they are now vulnerable, that in the future they could be experiencing very likely to be experiencing malnutrition and diseases and instability of all kinds. That's not a very nice message, it's not a very nice feeling to have, it's tough and it's certainly not a nice message to bring to other people. Two years on now my view has changed. I actually think we do have to talk to people about how we are all now becoming increasingly vulnerable inevitably and so the conversation now needs to shift. So you might ask why change now? For me there's at least two key reasons. The first one is surveys show that more and more people now anticipate societal disruption and collapse in their own lifetimes and there's a lot of environmental anxiety around that and people are confused, they're hurting and what I've realised is that over the last two years people who arrive at that place can actually help each other to find positive responses and how to change your life with this awareness. I think that's really helpful to avoid the kind of the shock and confusion that people will be feeling as they wake up to this leading to them being manipulated and we want to really help people avoid that and actually be supportive of each other and meaningful responses. A second reason is because behind closed doors establishment interests are starting to talk about how to respond to societal disruption and collapse from climate change. For instance the armies of the world. So in Britain the Ministry of Defence has a strategy unit and they have been looking at how to retain the capabilities, the military capabilities to fight if global supply chains become disrupted or collapse and they actually are talking about how you may need to go to war in order to sustain the capabilities to go to war to secure those basic resources I guess steel, oil, various different precious metals and so on. Can you imagine if the world's militaries are all now beginning to think like this how bad we could make the problem, how much worse we could make the problem and that's why we need clearly this discussion to be much more out in the open with other people with other values and intentions. Sociological research has found that scientists and academics like me tend to be more different to power, more reformist, less radical than people on average in a population and I think that means why we've actually not had as much unvarnished truth about our predicament or radical conversations coming from scholars. However, things are beginning to change. Just a few months ago we've saw 500 scholars come out and sign an international scholars warning about the risk of societal collapse and really demanding now that we have more open and mature conversations about the implications of that. However, our views were largely ignored by the mainstream media and that's why we need Extinction Rebellion to keep doing what it's doing and at a larger scale. The thing is about nonviolent civil disobedience is that it's a great conversation starter. It's like an electric shock to the heart of the democratic process that really can really get it started again. It's almost like a defribulation for the body politic. It doesn't provide the answers but it really gets things going again. That's why we need Extinction Rebellion to be out on the streets. It means we need to say it as we see it, no matter how difficult the emotions involved. I still get affected badly whenever I really delve into some of the latest climate science or look at some of the impacts around the world. A recent instance of that was when I read about the observatory in Hawaii finding that global carbon dioxide atmospheric concentrations have gone to the highest ever and that was a year after reduced human emissions because of the pandemic which suggests therefore that the earth is not doing what it used to do in terms of stabilizing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, not to the degree it used to and therefore we could really be seeing some of these really scary feedbacks underway. I was quite shocked at how quite a lot of climatologists tried to sort of soften the news and not actually say how worrying this is given the fact that emissions had come down but carbon concentrations had shot up. So as a way of allowing that feeling and expressing it, I actually wrote a poem and so this is going to be the first time I've recited it to camera. At 4.21.21 ppm feedback screams its piercing sound, rising rates after lockdown with falling down the long mountain of life. We'll turn away no more as the breaking of life returns to our threshold. What was pretended now breaks apart both in us and around. We're breaking together with the living one. You don't escape this. I don't. No part will not break together with each of us and every us within the living one. Is poetry what I've come to? Let's drop the ambiguity. We're fucked. I'm scared. Let's pray. But I'm no longer praying for time because there's infinity inside in you and me and anyone despised for in the beginning all was pre-forgiven. Gaia so loved her kid she got us to break together not apart with her. At 4.21.21 ppm there is no tougher love. But there is life after doom and life beyond fucked because life is always astounding in this one moment and the next. It's just that being slapped awake doesn't really feel that great. But could it ever? If you find some of the news and analysis unbearable then you're not alone. And I think what's really important is to allow difficult emotions, notice them, honour them as actually useful information, connect with other people openly, vulnerably about them and try and support each other in community and see how we can stay present to this difficulty in meaningful ways, wise ways, caring ways, kind ways, creative ways. It's important we help each other to avoid either getting stuck because of our aversion to difficult emotions or because of our immersion in them. As I wrote in the Exile Handbook I don't think it's helpful to say act now before it's too late because it's too late for so much already. While it's never too late to do the right thing, it's never too late to be awake to the social conditioning that's held us back from connection and care for each other and for nature. The future is going to be more unstable in many ways for many people. Only thin convictions demand bright horizons to keep going. Deep convictions can last no matter how long we might be riding through a valley with disruption and death. Articulating a deep conviction for respecting all life is key to the future of the environmental movement. If people think that non-violence is just a tactic, then when situations worsen some people might consider other tactics. Instead, non-violence can be upheld precisely because humanity is suffering, not despite it. The situation also means climate and environment activists can now really start working on climate adaptation. We need to see fair transformative and deep adaptation efforts talked about, campaigned about and actually brought forward in policy and very soon and I really hope Extinction Rebellion can play a part in that process going forward. Thank you for having me and I hope your efforts in America go well.