Extinction Rebellion, London, October 2019

I’m not sure how many people visit my site regularly. I know that my parents do. Thanks mom and dad! Squarespace and Google offer some analytics. I can see which IP addresses are visiting, but I don’t track those. It is fun to see where those IP addresses are located, though. Except when the IP address originates in Russia. I think the media has gone off the rails with the Great Red Scare, but I’ve also been critical of Russia online.

So if any of you are repeat visitors, I apologize if I repeat things in multiple posts. I try to keep things concise, though.

I was in the United Kingdom in October. One part family holiday three parts documentary photography work. I made up the “parts” ratio. Work might not be the right term. How about stuff I’d like to do as work. Whatever.

My plan was to work on photos related to Brexit. A massive Extinction Rebellion protest happened at the same time, so I added that into the mix. It already feels like it was ages ago. I imagine that has to be one of the biggest challenges for activists – maintaining momentum, cohesiveness, and direction. Eyes on the prize and all.

I liked seeing the Extinction Rebellion protests and taking photographs. I’ve always been an observer. That’s not a good thing. Even though I was only taking photos, I felt a little more connected to an issue I think is very important. I’m in the camp that believes we’re at grave risk. If you don’t believe that – well, that confuses me. I imagine that you believe scientists on all sorts of matters, but on an issue where there is great scientific consensus, you’ve chosen skepticism. I’m not making up the consensus part – NASA’s climate change page lays that consensus out. I hope the scientists prove wrong. I hope the deniers decide it’s better to be safe than sorry. We’ll survive an error by the scientists.

Scientific Consensus

Ninety-seven percent of climate scientists agree that climate-warming trends over the past century are extremely likely due to human activities, and most of the leading scientific organizations worldwide have issued public statements endorsing this position.

Here are some photos. I haven’t edited them (culled) as ruthlessly as I should have. I recently printed a zine of my photos, which involved long hours of looking at all of these. I need to make this post and then step away from the UK project for a while.