Bruce Bisset: The outlook for Monday - Extinction Rebellion thunder?

Bruce Bisset is preparing for an Extinction Rebellion's climate camp near Wellington which he says will cause major disruption in the capital. Photo / File

By the time you read this, I will be snugly ensconced in the midst of Extinction Rebellion's climate camp near Wellington, preparing for a major civil disruption in the capital on Monday morning.

Well, at least I hope I'll be snug, since the weather's not looking too flash – and who knows how it may change, or how quickly, these days?

Which is, of course, the main reason we're taking action. Like it or not – and I know most people don't like it, but hey, them's the facts – we're in a climate and ecological crisis which has progressed to emergency status.

Meaning, we're out of time. All the pussyfooting and duck-shovelling and other forms of procrastination that have resulted in things getting so much worse since the first World Climate Conference, back in 1979, put this issue on the news pages has wasted two whole generations' worth of effort that should have gone into making things better.

And now the doomsday clock has struck midnight, and STILL our "leaders" refuse to hear it chiming.

That's why we're rebelling. Why we are taking action in ways that may disrupt people's lives and even dismay sympathisers.

Because everyone needs to get it. We do not have 12 years or five years to save the world if we can; we have to act NOW.

In saying that, we're not terrorists. We are fundamentally non-violent in our approach and in our actions, and we will not compromise that stance because it is the way we believe the world needs to be.

But equally we will not stand passively by and watch disaster unfold without raising the alarm. Without doing something to wake our fellow citizens up to the fact the government – of every stripe – has consistently refused to address this crisis with the gravity and unswerving attention it requires.

Yes, New Zealand is a small nation, whose contribution to global warming and plastic pollution and any other factor you care to name is minor in the overall picture.

That does not excuse us. More, it does not allow us to pretend that our comfortable consumerist lifestyle, with all its baubles and benefits, is either deserved or in any way sustainable. It isn't.

Bruce Bisset

We who have lived over the past 60 years or so have enjoyed the best of all possible times and should, I suppose, be damned grateful to have been born into this thoughtlessly extravagant era.

But future generations will not see us as "fortunate". They will call us criminals, greedy resource depleters, sea-poisoners, nature destroyers. They will spit on our memory.

And the worst thing? There is nothing, now, that we can do to change that.

All we can do – all we can do – is act to try to ensure that some of our race, some of our grandchildren, survive.

That's why I am in Wellington, the capital city, which along with dozens of other capitals and major metropolises around the world will hear our alarm on Monday morning.

Our message is simple: face the truth, tell the truth, embrace the truth that the world as we've known it is a dead man walking.

And that this crisis is far greater than any war, any religion, any race; than any issue or conflict we humans have ever faced before.

We are the alarm, and we are chiming and ringing and wailing and crying for you.

You who could take action, you who could help save your children, you who might just make enough difference to keep something worthy from our sins.

Government must act, now, with full and conscious empowerment. We who lead the rebellion against extinction demand it.

- Bruce Bisset is a freelance writer and poet. Views expressed are the writer's opinion and not the newspaper's.