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    Extinction Rebellion ask the guardian to stop carrying pro carbon ads Archived Message

    Posted by dan on June 9, 2019, 7:25 am

    https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10218567617245780

    Donnachadh McCarthy

    Our Mini NVDA at XR Guardian Debate!
    (Non violent direct action).

    Wow! 70% of audience at The Guardian debate agreed that it was immoral and unethical for the Guardian to accept high-carbon flight adverts!

    Four of us from the XR BBC Tell The Truth group went to the Guardian Debate on the future of protest on Thursday evening, which featured 3 people from XR leadership team and 2 Guardian journalists.

    We had agreed that we would try to pull off a peaceful mini direct action.

    Instead of asking the panel if they thought it was immoral and unethical for the Guardian to accept high carbon meat/cruise-ship/car/flight adverts, we planned to instead ask the audience to stand up if they agreed with us.

    We drafted an agreed question, so that if one of us was called we could try it.

    I confess I was nervous doing even such a small nvda! The others admitted the same! ☺️

    Anyway, I was the one who managed to get called to ask a question.

    I framed the question by relating how I had woken up on Wednesday night literally in a sweat, having a panic atttack, after reading the Guardian report that global carbon emissions were rising at record rates, with us racing towards a terrifying 450ppm by 2030!

    I pointed out that the Guardian edition which announced the replacement of their plastic magazine wrapper with potato starch had 27 flight adverts, 7 cruise adverts, 2 car adverts and 2 beef adverts.

    Matthew Taylor, the environmental correspondent for hte Guarian responded acknowledging that those debates were going on internally in the paper.

    I then replied to his answer pointing out that the vast majority of the paper's editorial sections, other than the environmental section were full of pro high carbon editorial lines.

    He said we needed to understand the world they operated it (implying I think that we were in a high carbon market place and so they needed to comply with this?) .

    I then turned to the audience and asked those who agreed that it was immoral and unethical of the Guardian to accept high carbon advertising to stand up and about 70% of the audience did so.

    It was a powerful and moving moment. Far more powerful than just asking a question or asking for a show of hands.

    I could see the emotional shock of it registering on Matthew's face.

    He responded saying that it was important that they at the Guardian heard this message.

    We had a good chat in the pub afterwards and I made various suggestions about how they could raise more revenue by asking readers or philanthropic trusts to enable them to be high carbon advert free and suggested it could actually be a money earner for them, as an early market leader.

    Big thanks to my fellow co-director at The Climate Media Coalition (CMC) Caspar Hughes, Tom Hardy and Naoimi Emmerson from XR BBC TTT who helped manifest our little NVDA.

    Do please check out the short 3 minute video The Climate Media Coalition (CMC) has released making the case for the Guardian to ban high-carbon adverts.




    We are now in the middle of a terrible climate / ecological extinction emergency. We all need to think how can we make our points as powerfully and as effectively as possible in my opinion.

    Yes We Can!

    love
    Donnachadh x

    PS if you want to know how the fossil fuel billionaires hijacked our democracies, email contact@3acorns.co.uk and I will email you for free the ebook version of my book The Prostitute State - How Britain's Democracy Has Been Bought.

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