Chris Packham is out again, too
by The Canary
19 April 2024
A dramatic street theatre performance ‘Funeral for Nature‘ will take place throughout the streets of Bath on Saturday 20 April to mark the devastating decline of the natural world in the lead up to Earth Day on 22 April, an annual event which engages up to a billion people around the world each year.
19 April 2024
A dramatic street theatre performance ‘Funeral for Nature‘ will take place throughout the streets of Bath on Saturday 20 April to mark the devastating decline of the natural world in the lead up to Earth Day on 22 April, an annual event which engages up to a billion people around the world each year.
Funeral for Nature: worldwide events
The Funeral for Nature procession includes 400 Red Rebels dressed in their distinctive red outfits and hundreds of mourners in black. They will be accompanied by drummers playing a single funeral beat as they make their way through the city’s historic streets, culminating in a dramatic finale in front of the Abbey.
This will be the largest global assembly of Red Rebels ever seen, 400 in total. This is five times more than ever before, with people travelling from all over the UK and joined by groups from the Netherlands, Belgium and Denmark.
Funerals for Nature will be taking place simultaneously in Boston, Sydney, Gothenburg, and Lisbon. The Gothenburg event will be a ‘Nordic Funeral for Nature’ with groups joining from Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland.
Bath: raising awareness of nature depletion
The procession has been designed to raise awareness of the UK’s position as one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world, with 43% of UK bird species in decline, and 97% of wildflower meadows disappearing since the second world war. The organisers say statistics like these have motivated the group to take action, flooding the city in red and declaring ‘Code Red for Nature’.
Thousands of ‘Orders of Service’ will be given out to onlookers, containing information about the crisis and what they can do about it.
The Bath procession will be joined by nature campaigner Chris Packham who will deliver a ‘eulogy’ to the crowd at the finale of the event when it arrives in front of the Abbey. This will follow a flashmob performance by the West of England Youth Orchestra.
The centre-piece of the procession will be a beautiful funeral bier, constructed from willow, with a ‘Mother Earth’ figure created by renowned artist Anna Gillespie. It will lie on a naturalistic bed of planting staged by Chelsea award-winning landscape designers Dan Pearson Studio, followed by mourners in black hats and veils.
The sixth mass extinction event
The event has been planned to coincide with Earth Day, happening just two days later on 22 April, to highlight that we are at ‘CODE RED’ for nature and that around the world, biodiversity is being annihilated at a terrifying rate.
Organisers say that we are entering the ‘sixth mass extinction’ event and the consequences could be catastrophic if we do not act swiftly, and that in spite of promises from governments, biodiversity loss shows no sign of slowing.
Rob Delius, head of sustainability & architect at Stride Treglown – one of the organisers and the person who put forward the Funeral for Nature idea – said:
The intention is to send a powerful SOS message for nature by creating a visual spectacle, that will in equal measures shock and inspire onlookers. The UK has sleepwalked into this nature crisis and the fact that we are now one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world simply isn’t being talked about enough.
We want the processions to create a talking point and for the public to be moved to demand that Government, Local Authorities, landowners and businesses urgently do more to restore biodiversity.
Funeral for Nature – we must act now
Doug Francisco, creative director and founding member of The Invisible Circus, said:
There is no better time to act than right now. It is clear that we are in a crisis and there are no second chances – we have to do something immediately. We hope that this demonstration, in its beauty and urgency, will incite action in more cities across the world. We want to see Red Rebels on streets across the globe, spreading the message that if we don’t act now, we won’t be able to act at all!
Anna Gillespie, artist, said:
Unlike conventional protests, the procession will be free of banners or placards. Instead we are relying on the strong imagery of the huge assembly of Red Rebels and the impact of the figure of Mother Nature on a funeral bier carried by mourners to get the message across.
Everyone participating has a powerful desire to express their desperate feelings of loss and fear as the natural world struggles to survive in the face of our human onslaught.
Featured image via Code Red for Nature
Just Stop Oil just exposed the greenwashing at Earth Fest for all the world to see
The stench of capitalism is strong
Just Stop Oil fundraisers were kicked out of greenwashing Earth Fest for doing anti-capitalist fundraising. Ironic, really, considering the group was one of the few things that was actually addressing the climate crisis properly at the sham Earth Fest.
Just Stop Oil: showing up Earth Fest
Two Just Stop Oil supporters were forcibly ejected from Earth-Fest whilst collecting donations for the group. The supporters were asking attendees to financially support effective direct action whilst donations to Just Stop Oil are doubled for the next three days:
Earth Fest has been criticised for being a ‘greenwashing’ event with sponsors including AutoTrader and attendees including JP Morgan, Jet 2, Tesla, and Drax.
Peak greenwashing
For example, as the Canary previously reported Drax is the UK’s single largest carbon emitter, and world’s biggest tree burner. The company currently receives around £1.7 million per day in renewable subsidies from UK energy bills to burn wood – some of which comes from protected forests.
Meanwhile, Tesla has also come under repeated fire for its “capitalist sham solutions” to the climate crisis. As the Canary previously detailed, the extractive mining and manufacture of electric vehicles is a carbon-intensive and exploitative process:
There’s still the not so small matter that producing vehicles to replace the entire existing petroleum fleet will generate a lot of emissions. On top of this, you have the pollution and ecological destruction of extracting the multitude of critical minerals required for their manufacture. Not to mention the labour violations, rights abuses, and land-grabbing linked to mining for these materials.
Mack Preston and Isla Greenwood, a former Greenpeace fundraiser, carried buckets asking for donations at Earth Fest whilst wearing Just Stop Oil t-shirts. The pair took to a megaphone and could be heard saying “Are we really going to sit here and talk about electric cars? We need radical action!”
Give us your money (but not in the Bob Geldof way)
For the next three days, until Earth Day, all donations to Just Stop Oil will be doubled by a group of generous donors.
You can donate to the campaign and have your donation doubled here – money better spent than at Earth Fest.
A spokesperson for the group said:
We’re out of time. It is no longer appropriate to be sitting in endless conferences that achieve nothing. We need radical action now and we need system change to avoid the worst effects of ongoing climate breakdown and societal collapse.
We need to be funding effective direct action that gets the headlines and forces this issue up the news agenda and to the forefront of the public consciousness. History has shown over and over that disruptive civil resistance gets the goods. Donate to Just Stop Oil and have it doubled at Just Stop Oil.org.
Featured image and additional images via Just Stop Oil
The stench of capitalism is strong
Just Stop Oil fundraisers were kicked out of greenwashing Earth Fest for doing anti-capitalist fundraising. Ironic, really, considering the group was one of the few things that was actually addressing the climate crisis properly at the sham Earth Fest.
Just Stop Oil: showing up Earth Fest
Two Just Stop Oil supporters were forcibly ejected from Earth-Fest whilst collecting donations for the group. The supporters were asking attendees to financially support effective direct action whilst donations to Just Stop Oil are doubled for the next three days:
Earth Fest has been criticised for being a ‘greenwashing’ event with sponsors including AutoTrader and attendees including JP Morgan, Jet 2, Tesla, and Drax.
Peak greenwashing
For example, as the Canary previously reported Drax is the UK’s single largest carbon emitter, and world’s biggest tree burner. The company currently receives around £1.7 million per day in renewable subsidies from UK energy bills to burn wood – some of which comes from protected forests.
Meanwhile, Tesla has also come under repeated fire for its “capitalist sham solutions” to the climate crisis. As the Canary previously detailed, the extractive mining and manufacture of electric vehicles is a carbon-intensive and exploitative process:
There’s still the not so small matter that producing vehicles to replace the entire existing petroleum fleet will generate a lot of emissions. On top of this, you have the pollution and ecological destruction of extracting the multitude of critical minerals required for their manufacture. Not to mention the labour violations, rights abuses, and land-grabbing linked to mining for these materials.
Mack Preston and Isla Greenwood, a former Greenpeace fundraiser, carried buckets asking for donations at Earth Fest whilst wearing Just Stop Oil t-shirts. The pair took to a megaphone and could be heard saying “Are we really going to sit here and talk about electric cars? We need radical action!”
Give us your money (but not in the Bob Geldof way)
For the next three days, until Earth Day, all donations to Just Stop Oil will be doubled by a group of generous donors.
You can donate to the campaign and have your donation doubled here – money better spent than at Earth Fest.
A spokesperson for the group said:
We’re out of time. It is no longer appropriate to be sitting in endless conferences that achieve nothing. We need radical action now and we need system change to avoid the worst effects of ongoing climate breakdown and societal collapse.
We need to be funding effective direct action that gets the headlines and forces this issue up the news agenda and to the forefront of the public consciousness. History has shown over and over that disruptive civil resistance gets the goods. Donate to Just Stop Oil and have it doubled at Just Stop Oil.org.
Featured image and additional images via Just Stop Oil
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