“We need to do something now”

Through a campaign called ‘Deep Water Rising’, demanding action to protect communities from the consequences of global heating, people across the UK took part in a ‘call the alarm’ to alert the attention of the world’s leaders, who are currently attending COP26, the UN’s Climate Change Conference in Glasgow this week.

The group gathered at iconic locations that are vulnerable to flooding on Saturday evening (October 30) before the start of COP26, and the protest in Horncastle took place at the Market Place.

Those attending the Horncastle protest gathered at the Market Place at 5.30pm with candles and torches to shine a light, and brought drums, whistles, and even saucepans and wooden spoons to make plenty of noise.

Pete Richards, spokesman for the Horncastle protest, said: “Saturday went quite well, we had about a dozen or so people came and while we didn’t expect a huge turn-out we definitely made a racket.”

Following the noise, there was also a two minutes’ silence to reflect on how the world has been impacted by climate change.

Pete said: “People right at this moment are being affected and while we’re being impacted by flooding, other people around the world are losing their homes so we had to put it into perspective and use those two minutes to think about those people.”

On Monday, Lincolnshire County Council made the decision to reject plans for oil drilling in the East Lindsey village of Biscathorpe, and Pete said: “It’s ironic that the very day the international leaders are discussing how to go about preventing this huge problem of climate change, locally the county council is deciding whether or not to pull fossil fuels out of the ground.

“We already have the solution to sort this crisis out, but it rests on the will of the world’s leaders to do it and that’s the hardest part of all.

“If we’re going to save the plant for our kids, we have to do something now and start planting more trees and keep our fossil fuels in the ground.

“Boris Johnson is going around playing the eco-hero, but he needs to look in his own back yard where there’s coal mines in Cumbria, new roads being built which will mean more cars on the road, and the new HS2 high speed train which will destroy our woodland, which is our equivalent of rainforests being destroyed in the Amazon.”