Camp set up outside Scottish Parliament in five-day climate protest

17 June 2019, 08:22

Protesters have set up a campsite in the grounds of the Scottish Parliament - and plan to remain there for the next five days.

The Holyrood Rebel Camp will see "non-violent direct action" in Edinburgh with various workshops and events taking place for those on the Holyrood site.

Extinction Rebellion Scotland have set up the camp, saying it will be their "biggest ever gathering".

They are calling on the Scottish Government to do more in response to what they call a "climate crisis and ecological breakdown" as the Climate Bill is to be discussed in Holyrood this week.

A recent report by the Committee on Climate Change recommended the UK should aim to be net-zero by 2050, with Scotland proposing a target for doing so five years earlier.

Lauren McGlynn, a 38-year-old photographer and activist, said: "Extinction Rebellion Scotland have decided to put up this camp outside of the Scottish Parliament to try to put pressure on the Government to give us the best possible Climate Bill.

"Currently the Climate Bill they are considering is based on the Committee on Climate Change report, which at best gives us a 50% chance of staying below 1.5 degrees celsius, and it's based on a bunch of techno-fixes that haven't been proven and are yet to be invented.

"Scotland should be a climate leader, they should do enough, they should go far enough because the other countries in the world it will be much harder to persuade if we don't do enough.

"There's much more that the Scottish Government could do that they have control over."

On June 4, five activists from the group with locks around their necks were attached to the Parliament building, with the means of freeing them sent to the leaders of the SNP, Conservatives, Labour, the Scottish Greens and the Liberal Democrats.