On Saturday 30 October, the March to Glasgow, organized by the Ecologist Rebellion in Action and Extinction, is scheduled to enter the Scottish capital along with another column heading west. Scottish climate organizations organize a big reception for the protesters.
On that day, the seven Spaniards and five Britons on the march will have walked more than 1,000 kilometers. Hundreds of people will accompany them for the last few kilometers.
Five days after the end of the walk, they consider that the goals outlined at the beginning of the walk have already been achieved. As they passed through more than 100 British cities, they publicly denounced the failure of governments to comply with the Paris agreements on climate change. Rupture that pushes the beings that inhabit the planet onto the path of collapse. Governments must complete the energy transition by 2030.
After participating in numerous rallies, urban marches, debates, protest events and receptions, the march has been a catalyst for the activity of local groups in order to ensure that more than a million Britons and Britons.
They also understand that the march guaranteed a symbolic presence of high commitment on the part of the Spanish State’s environmentalist in the mobilizations for the Climate Summit.
British organizations such as Friends of the Earth or Extinction Rebellion provided great logistical and human support for the march. More than a thousand British activists participated in some stages of the journey. The participation of union leaders and workers’ organization cadres has also been very important.
The work undertakes to march
The leadership of the mayors of large cities in the central-east of the country, a traditional bastion of Labour, has been very significant. Sheffield, Wakefield, Leeds, Durham, Charlton or Alnwick are some of these municipalities and reveal the opposition party’s turn to a policy more sensitive to the climate crisis.
The left wing of Labour is heavily involved in supporting the march. Some of its national leaders abandon their lukewarmness in the face of the climate crisis and start working with stronger government programs as the times demand. Labor MP Alex Sobel is a speaker on the UN panel of scientists on climate change and works on new government plans to implement energy optimization programs improving the insulation of millions of homes.
It also designs public transport investment plans to reduce emissions caused by the use and abuse of private vehicles in the UK. Other local leaders, veteran leftist militants, have even proposed the idea of ​​creating a personal digital emission control card for each person, in the style of the driver’s license for points in force in Spain.
The support given to the initiative by different protestant churches stands out, hosting and preparing some dinners for the protesters, showing the commitment of these faiths to the climate emergency. Even the Sikh religious leader from Leeds had a meeting with protesters in which he declared: “This is not the time to retreat into meditation. It’s time to act to save life on the planet.
Some aristocrats such as the Earl of Northumberland, the region’s great landowner and owner of Alnwick Castle – the setting for the Harry Potter film saga – have expressed their sympathy for the climate cause. All this movement in defense of the climate contrasts with the position of the British government of Boris Johnson, of gestures and flagrant violations, which keeps in its drawers an ambitious investment plan to improve the insulation of many buildings in the United Kingdom with very high fuel consumption for heating .
Forces righteous after 24 days of walking, the protesters head to the Scottish capital, Edinburgh, where they will join Spanish and British activists to complete the last three stages of the march before entering Glasgow at midday. Monday, Saturday, October 30th.
The column has conducted periodic tests to detect COVID-19 due to the high rate of infections in the UK.