Tell us about what’s happening at Ardee bog, and why you are campaigning to stop it. Ardee Bog, in Ireland’s County Louth, is threatened by an absurd infrastructure project. If a proposed road, the N52 Ardee Bypass, is allowed to proceed in its current form it will cut through Ardee Bog and its […]
Read More… from Read: Trees breathe out. We breathe in.
Katie Holten
This year for Remembrance Day for Lost Species, November 30th, Writers Rebel are bringing together 20 writers from around the globe including Margaret Atwood, Amitav Ghosh, Elizabeth Kolbert, Ben Okri, Homero Aridjis and others to each tell the story of one animal. Please join us for this free landmark event. Below, Writers Rebel member Alex […]
Read More… from READ: They All Run Together
Join us for On the Brink: Mon 30th Nov, 7pm GMT
M John Harrison is a much-celebrated multi-award winning veteran writer of science fiction and speculative fiction. He recently won the 2020 Goldsmiths/New Statesmen Award for The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again. Here, he talks to Writers Rebel co-founder, and writer Monique Roffey, whose novel The Mermaid of Black Conch was also shortlisted for the […]
Read More… from Read: Q&A with M John Harrison
Monique Roffey
Hau kea white snow, snow (Hawaiian) In this tropical archipelago, snow is most likely to be found on a simmering crater. In winter the temperature at the summits of Mauna Loa, Haleakala and Mauna Kea – the state’s three tallest volcanoes – drops to below freezing. Mauna Kea means ‘white mountain’ and it […]
Weather Gods I Tired of burnings, bulldozers, charred lungs, Chaac the Rain God decamps from Mayan rainforests, rides the bloated trade winds, comes to reign over the Old World. Days on end the swollen earth has swallowed till it’s soft as blotting-paper. The sun is an aspirin dissolving in a gauze of […]
There are a million species under threat of extinction throughout the world, with as many as two hundred disappearing every day. But amongst these there is one species whose passing we need not mourn: the Danish mink farmer. Even before Covid jumped the species barrier from humans to mink and back again, mutating into […]
Jimmy Piaguaje is a young indigenous Siekopai defender from Siekoya Remolino, a community of 53 families living on the banks of the Aguarico River in the northeastern Ecuadorian Amazon region. The Siekopai (which means multicoloured people) are renowned for their shamanic acumen and knowledge of medicinal plants, with uses for over 1,000 different plants. According […]
Read More… from Read: Hope in the Amazon: Interview with Jimmy Piaguaje
Jimmy Piaguaje es un joven activista indígena Siekopai de Siekoya Remolino, una comunidad de 53 familias que viven a orillas del río Aguarico en la región amazónica nororiental ecuatoriana. Los Siekopai (que significa personas multicolores) son conocidos por su perspicacia chamánica y su conocimiento sobre plantas medicinales, con usos para más de 1,000 plantas diferentes. […]
Read More… from Leer: Esperanza en la Amazonía: Entrevista con Jimmy Piaguaje
When the news finally came that the democratic candidate Joe Biden had won the state of Pennsylvania, putting him over the 270 electoral college votes needed to win the United States presidential election, our household cheered! I ran outside – not to the streets because where we live there are none – but because […]
It was the Prussian polymath, scientist and writer Alexander von Humboldt (1767-1835) who paved the way for biogeography – the study of species and ecosystems across space and time – becoming established as an empirical science. The publications that emerged from his many expeditions are recognised as foundational to our present understanding of nature as a single great […]
This year we went on holiday to the north west coast of Scotland. We were looking for some respite from overcrowded parks, bad news and the frenzy of disconsolation, and had heard good things. The drive was long and twisting but it didn’t disappoint. With every dark loch and crag from Fort William, and […]
Migration seasonal migration has lost its language. birds commence reverse flight. head for land that does not exist. island holds breath, throws up sick. human limbs made tides rogue whip. birds circle, cry. swansong is choking sob. our talk is famous. when lunged with death you were brick. a witness […]
Look at that tree, said Mimi, look at that tree and write about it. But Mimi, I don’t know the name of that tree. I can describe it but can’t distinguish it, tall, brown, bursting with leaves like a loaded wallet, autumn’s green and yellow receipts. Mimi, is it against my nature to notice the […]
Read More… from Read: City Boy Talks To Trees
Raymond Antrobus
As a species, our lack of kindness has surely led the human race to where we are today. The majority of pandemics have been caused by our insufferable treatment of animals. Asiatic black bears are a case in point. The rebel in me wants to criticise the bear farming industry for its horribly cruel practices, […]
Read More… from Read: The Only Cure is Kindness
Jill Robinson
I am surprised at the nervousness in the pit of my stomach. I’m facing a tree-shaded track descending alongside the remains of an old quarry. Every single fibre of my being is screaming at me to plunder its unknown treasures. Yet I durstn’t. I durstn’t because whilst I know it is a path, it is […]
You’re an environmental activist, as well as an author of speculative fiction. Tell us a bit about these two aspects of your life, and how they feed each other. At university I studied Economics which might sound counter-intuitive for an environmental activist. I guess the theories of demand-led growth, markets and so on which […]
Read More… from Read: Q&A with Rajat Chaudhuri
Rajat Chaudhuri
My conversion road to Extinction Rebellion began at Waterloo Bridge, during its April 2019 occupation by rebels. I was literally stopped in my tracks by the bold way Extinction Rebellion had claimed the bridge, by the carnival atmosphere and the potted plants hauled in to create an impromptu garden. But above all by the […]
Sharks are at the crucial apex of our ocean ecosystems, maintaining balance among species below them on the food chain. Already a quarter of the populations of over a thousand species of sharks and their related skates and rays are threatened with extinction. Shark fins, considered a delicacy in Asian cuisine, are a lucrative trade […]
Read More… from Read: Sharks – Victims of the Race for a COVID vaccine?
Dick Russell
Some thoughts on art, direct action, and addiction The opinions in this article are mine and don’t represent those of Extinction Rebellion Scotland or anyone else. You might have seen that last week, three XR activists climbed onto the roof of the Scottish Parliament building and dropped a banner reading “Choose Oil or […]
Each morning, I file my vlog. The leaves rustle round me and the squirrels curse at me but I hold up my phone and talk loudly at it. Yesterday, for the first time, I didn’t feel like it. Not much had changed so it seemed a shame to disturb the tree top talking about […]
To James ‘Iggy’ Fox We are nature. We are science. We turn grief into action. We protest and we sing and we play and we dance. We do so for life. We are mourning the earth. We are mourning us. We are re-inventing the city. We are the grief-stricken carnival spirit that marks […]