The constant attacks on the activists are inadvertently revealing. They are called "selfish", when they are sacrificing far more for the environment than their critics. They are called "extremists", despite the world's ever more extreme weather. They are dismissed as middle-class dilettantes, yet also feared as fanatical members of a cult. They are condemned for interfering with "people going about their daily business", as the presenter Mark Austin put it with an air of outrage on Sky News, even though our everyday habits are a central cause of the crisis.
Underlying all these criticisms is a strong but unstated desire not to engage with the activists' main argument: that the climate emergency is so huge and urgent that modest changes to our lifestyles and conventional political action – from summits such as Cop27 to marches to polite negotiations between governments and companies – are no longer enough...
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