Why I stopped arguing about the climate emergency and tried the silent treatment instead | Helena Echlin

The sensible methods didn't work, so I became a member of the Red Rebel Brigade. Now I feel I'm doing something usefulMy clown-white facepaint makes my skin feel tight and I'm scared my elaborate headdress is going to slip. It's my first outing with the Red Rebel Brigade, the silent climate activist performance group. About a dozen of us are clad in robes, veils and evening gloves - all a bright blood-red. We glide to our local Barclays bank to stand in a tableau of grief. We are meant to aim for the faraway stare of "a watcher through the ages", but I'm afraid I look more like someone stuck in a slow queue at Sainsbury's. I suddenly catch the eye of someone I know as they walk past, staring at me like I'm bonkers. But I've tried the sensible ways of doing something about the climate crisis. I've written letters to politicians, carried placards and had endless conversations. At best, I just put people's backs up. So I've decided to shut up and wrap myself in a red sheet instead.Two years before this, on the morning of 9 September 2020, I woke in my home in Berkeley, California, to a Plutonian twilight. Smoke from the latest wildfire had mixed with the fog in a blanket that shorter wavelengths of light couldn't penetrate. I tried to explain away the darkness to my kids but I felt like a parent in biblical Egypt, claiming everything was fine while frogs rained from the sky. My husband and I had worried about California's escalating drought and wildfires for years, but after Orange Skies Day we decided we'd had enough. Time to move back to my native UK. (Unlike millions displaced by the climate crisis, we were privileged to have this option.) Continue reading...