Last week, the upper House inflicted a historic defeat on the Government’s Trade Bill. This article explains the reasons for and the significance of the defeat, in the context of the struggle over Brexit and in defence of a precautionary approach to environmental- and public-health- protection.

The Extinction Rebellion (XR) has rapidly made a name for itself - by way of unleashing an unprecedented scale of non-violent direct-action (NVDA) in London.

The first phase of protests came to a head with ‘Rebellion Day 2’, in which we marched on Downing Street and Buckingham Palace. The movement is internationalising. But what next for XR in the UK?

Not heard of the “Extinction Rebellion” before? Then you heard it here first. Because soon, everyone is going to have heard of it. The Extinction Rebellion is a non-violent direct action movement challenging inaction over dangerous climate change and the mass extinction of species which, ultimately, threatens our own species.

October 31st — All Hallows’ Eve — is the day of the launch of “Extinction Rebellion”. Hundreds of us will be descending upon Parliament Square, to declare that we’re no longer willing to stand by while the-powers-that-be frogmarch our species (and most wildlife) towards extinction.

Climate chaos has become an existential threat. And so we’re rebelling.

Climate-nemesis is near-certain. But “near-certain” is not yet “inevitable”. On the contrary, it is still uncertain. By making it sound inevitable, we run the risk of fomenting inaction at the worst possible time. We need to prepare for what is near-certain. But if we give up trying to stop it then it will become inevitable. We need to try to stop it: roll on the eXtinction Rebellion.

As the saying goes: it isn’t easy being green. For starters: Because we don’t get nearly enough air-time (lacking enough rich backers with the ear of the government, perhaps.

Like most Greens, I typically jump at opportunities to go on air. Pretty much any opportunity: BBC national radio, BBC TV, Channel 4, Sky – I’ve done them all over the years, for good or ill. Even when, as is not infrequently the case, the deck is somewhat stacked against me, or the timing inadequate for anything more than a soundbite, or the question up for debate less than ideal.

Green World, like the Green Party itself, has been ahead of the curve on so many issues. Possibly the most important issue of them all is the climate crisis.

But we have to be honest with ourselves; there has not been nearly enough success on this. This is the age of consequences. There are already consequences – and these will only multiply – of the human failure to act adequately on climate.

Instead of facing up to the reality of the climate crisis, even we Greens tend to slip into a sort of lived denial of what we humans are doing to our climate.

This winter, now finally ending, has seen disturbing early signs of the Earth’s climate starting perhaps to go out of control. The fierce cold snap in the UK occurred because the Arctic’s normal weather came down here; meanwhile, the Arctic was off-the-scale warm.

It’s time we faced up to reality: humanity is almost certainly going to have to learn to live in a world that has been radically damaged and transformed by human-triggered climate change. We are – virtually all of us, either softly or (less often) explicitly – in climate denial. The greenhouse gases we have polluted the atmosphere with have already set us down a path of serious and possibly irreversible environmental disruption, and the prospect of technocratic rescue is as unlikely as it is worrying on its own terms.