LONDON: More than 6,000 environmental activists, affiliated or sympathetic to the protest group Extinction Rebellion (ER), blocked the five iconic bridges into central London on Saturday to demand immediate government's actions on climate change.
"I think people are realizing the extent of the crisis that they are in, and frustrated with a government that is doing ¦ [nothing]," Robin Boardman-Pattison, a coordinator with ER, told Sputnik during the road block at Blackfriars Bridge.
He pointed out that the government had been ignoring demands of environmental groups for decades.
"We've been trying for so long. Thirty years we've known that the climate crisis threatens human lives, threatens species across the world and the government has done nothing about it. We've increased carbon emissions by 60 percent and they're still rising ¦ People are not going to take it anymore. They're fed up. I'm fed up. I'm thinking about my future here and they're just throwing me into the abyss," Boardman-Pattison said.
ER have so far staged a week-long period of protest, occupying the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy on Monday.
Saturday's action involved over 6,000 activists, according to the group, with police officers believed to have made around 80 arrests.
The activists claim to have repeatedly demanded a meeting with state officials, something they argue should lead to the formation of a full "citizen's assembly" to legislate against environmentally harmful policies.
According to the protesters, this is required because the UK government's energy policy is "nonsensical" in the face of now widely reported ecological crisis, an argument all the more controversial following the authorities' decision to restart fracking operations in Lancashire last month.
"It's absolutely counterproductive. In fact it's nonsensical and it shows the strength that corporate power has over our government, because the science is completely against [fracking]," Boardman-Pattison said.
Last month, the Cuadrilla energy company resumed its fracking works in Lancashire that were suspended in 2011.
The company admitted that its activity was likely to have caused two earthquakes outside Blackpool.
In 2014, it applied for a permit to resume fracking with the Lancashire county council, which gave its consent despite public protests.
Cuadrilla once again suspended its activities in late October after a new 0.4-magnitude seismic activity at the site of the fracking works, which however were soon resumed.