Extinction Rebellion Boston held a meditation swarm in Wellesley Square

For Immediate Release

May 30, 2020

Contact: Mike Fogelberg, Extinction Rebellion Media Coordinator, 617-818-3675, mfogelberg5@gmail.com

Extinction Rebellion Boston held a Meditation Swarm in Wellesley Square

Climate Activists demand that local, state, and national governments act urgently on the climate and ecological crisis

BOSTON, MA — Local members of the international grassroots environmental movement, Extinction Rebellion, held a meditation swarm in Wellesley Square today.

The action highlighted how the world's response, with a few lamentable exceptions, to the Covid-19 crisis has demonstrated how quickly our global community can change behavior when faced with a life-threatening crisis. Extinction Rebellion Boston believes that humans need to act with the same sense of unity and urgency if we are to survive the climate and ecological emergency.

“Our action hopes to convey the message that we need to take the lessons we are learning through this crisis and apply them to the climate crisis. There is no going back to our previous understanding of "normal" if we are to "flatten the curve" of the consequences of unchecked global heating and ecological collapse,” says Jenny Allen of Extinction Rebellion.

Both the coronavirus and the climate crisis display the need for world governments to be transparent about impending threats and to create organized plans of action to protect the health and safety of citizens. Because China’s authoritarian government withheld information about the outbreak of the coronavirus in Wuhan, the outbreak was not contained from the start.¹ If Trump hadn’t initially denied the crisis, and had acted two weeks sooner, tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths would have been avoided.²

As with the coronavirus, government leaders need to be forthcoming about the imminent threat of climate and ecological collapse and take immediate action to prevent the worst from happening.

“Politicians, business leaders and citizens cannot be experts in subjects like pandemics and ecological breakdown. Scientists are. We must listen to scientists, report on their findings, and follow their lead,” says Nadia Colburne, PhD, and member of Extinction Rebellion Boston in an article published in opendemocracy.net.³

As the global economy recovers from the effects of the coronavirus, we should be transitioning to an electric grid that runs off renewable energy and not coal, oil, and natural gas. We don’t have much time left to take action in order to keep global temperatures from spiking above 1.5 degrees of warming - a level where earth’s feedback loops will fundamentally alter life on this planet, with human’s losing the ability to stop what climate scientists call an “uninhabitable hothouse earth.” ⁵

Extinction Rebellion utilizes nonviolent direct action to raise public awareness about the climate and ecological crisis and demand that governments, news media, and polluting industries tell the truth about the climate emergency. They demand that Governor Baker, the United States government, and governments around the globe enact legally-binding policies to reduce carbon emissions to net zero by 2025 and take further action to remove the excess of atmospheric greenhouse gases.

*Extinction Rebellion Massachusetts is an autonomous chapter of the international grassroots movement, Extinction Rebellion (XR), which started in London in 2018. The purpose of XR is to tell the truth about how dire the ecological and climate crisis is and spark immediate action in order to prevent complete climate and ecological collapse. We aim to mobilize people around the world to utilize nonviolent direct action to demand that governments take radical action to avert societal collapse caused by widespread climate and ecological disaster, and to protect front-line communities, biodiversity, and the natural world. This movement is non-political, and unites all of humanity behind a singular goal of a just and livable future. Learn more at: xrmass.org

1. CNN, "China's hero doctor was punished for telling truth about coronavirus"
2. NY Times, "Lockdown Delays Cost at Least 36,000 Lives, Data Show"
3. OpenDemocracy.net, "Coronavirus and climate activism: five common lessons"
4. IPCC 2018 Report
5. CBS, “Human civilization faces "existential risk" by 2050 according to new Australian climate change report”