“Your future is f*cked!”: climate change protest causes Oxford Road chaos

A protest against the inaction on climate change by pressure group Extinction Rebellion has caused delays on Oxford Road.

The protest saw members of the group block the road in both at the pedestrian crossing outside the Alan Gilbert Learning Commons (Ali G) and Students’ Union (SU).

Despite announcing their protest would only last 15 minutes, people at the University were divided on the effectiveness of the method of protest.

Lizzy Haughton, a member of the group and also SU Activities Officer, said: “Conventional approaches, such as petitions, sit-ins, lobbying MPs, [to addressing] the massive climate catastrophe we’re in haven’t worked, and we’re calling for real change, right now. We have no more time left.

“History shows that civil disobedience brings about structural change, and that’s what we need. That’s why we were taking part in a roadblock for 15 minutes, which obviously caused quite a lot of disruption, but that’s what we need”.

However, some passers-by failed to see the merit in abandoning conventional protest means, with angry shouts being heard during and after the protest. One man argued with protestors that they should have kept their actions to the roadside.

Another member of the campaign during the roadblock shouted through a megaphone that students and passers-by alike were “f*cked” and that the current protests against the climate crisis are being done “to draw attention to the fact the world is facing the greatest emergency in is history, greater than world war”.

He went on to say that “people cannot solve this on their own. It’s so much bigger than shopping differently, reducing plastics – even though that’s positive. We need enormous systemic change. Imagine you are in a war, you would be talking about it every day. We need to respond to it as if it’s an emergency”.