Extinction Rebellion protesters 'climb' Chesterfield's Crooked Spire church

Members of the Chesterfield and North East Derbyshire XR group dressed as if prepared to climb the famous spire to demand the government debate and pass a Bill in Parliament to speed up the drive to a carbon-neutral economy.

The group say they want people ‘to understand their concerns, without actually being disruptive in the town’.

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So they ‘pretended’ to climb the spire at the Church of St Mary and All Saints and fix banners to its sides.

Pictures showed the XR ‘climbers’ preparing to climb the church tower, and edited pictures of how the steeple would look if they had actually hung the banners.

Brian Lever, from the Chesterfield XR group, said: “We can’t wait until 2050 to reach net zero carbon, and at the moment the government is failing to meet that target to bring greenhouse gasses down.

"The Climate and Ecological Emergency Bill wants the UK to be accountable for and mitigate damage for all our carbon emissions.”

“The Government’s target of 2050 will be 25 years too late, and that by then the world’s climate will have ‘tipped’ beyond recovery, leading to the flooding of major cities like London, mass migrations from the south as agriculture and food supplies fail, food wars, increasingly devastating forest fires, massive extinction of species, possibly including we humans.”

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