Climate campaigners to stage emergency medic stunt in Sleaford town centre to ‘save planet earth’

Sleaford Climate Action Network will be holding the Planet Medics Event on Saturday, delivering a graphic demonstration of the perilous state of our planet to the streets of Sleaford.

As world leaders meet in Glasgow at COP 26 to discuss how to address the huge issue facing the world due to climate and ecological change, a team of ‘rapid response medics’ will be symbolically dealing with a patient that is failing fast. The message is that Planet Earth is dying, but the team do all they can to to keep the beating heart of our planet alive.

Organiser Tim Grigg explains: “We hope that by bringing this powerful action to the streets of Sleaford, we will get people talking about Climate Change, engaged in the issues, and to realise that this isn’t a problem we can leave to someone else to solve, we all have to be part of the solution.”

He adds: “Lifestyle changes are important, but we have to demand more from our leaders, and not just rhetoric, and targets set way off in the future. Our planet needs our help and it needs it now, and there are solutions, economic systems that work with and not against nature, and if we make the change, our children can look forward to a life in an improving world as our planet flourishes once again.”

The action group says that for far too long mankind has been taking from the planet, exploiting its natural resources, wastefully producing and consuming far beyond what our planet can sustain. They state that the natural world which provides everything we need to survive, is in rapid decline, as we cut down our forests, pollute our land, rivers and seas and pump greenhouse gases into the air. They says millions of plant and animal species are at risk of extinction due to our activities. As our planet warms, extreme weather events, heatwaves and floods and droughts are occurring far more often as the delicate balance of life on earth is upset.

Tim says: “So as our medics battle to save Mother Earth on the streets of Sleaford, will our leaders take the big decision to stop the damage we are inflicting on our planet. Only time will tell.”

The action will take place between between 11am and 1pm on Saturday, at the Handley Monument and the Market Place in Sleaford.

It comes after Sleaford Climate Action Network joined other Climate activists last Saturday in holding family-friendly gatherings to mark the start of the COP26 talks in Glasgow.

Under the banner “Floody Hell!” and “Clang for COP”, local groups invited people to join them in gatherings for the Earth on Saturday, October 30, in Lincoln, Louth, Horncastle and Sleaford.

“Floody Hell!” is part of Extinction Rebellion’s Deep Water Rising campaign, demanding urgent action to protect human communities and the natural world from the global heating, with a special focus on the devastating impacts of flooding arising from extreme rainfall and rising sea levels. Scientists suggest homes and livelihoods of thousands of the county’s residents are threatened in the future as well as vast areas currently growing 40 per cent of the UK’s vegetables and cereal crops.

People were asked to share their hopes and fears for the future, and find out what climate change will mean for Lincolnshire. Activists met in Sleaford Market Place and at 5.58pm there were two minutes silence followed by “Clang for COP” at 6pm with drums, car horns, sirens, pots and pans, anything noisy being used to raise the alarm for the climate emergency.

You can see how the event went here.

Linda Nicklin of Deep Water Rising explains: “Our world has never been in greater peril than it is now. We don’t need yet more empty promises, failed targets and greenwash from the world leaders gathering at COP26. Despite all their talk over 25 previous meetings they have failed to protect us from the effects of climate change. We want people to join us in calling out those failures: we want the rich and powerful attending COP to know that we are watching them!”