One of those on the road this morning, Jonathan Kennedy, 44, an Engineer and Parent of two young children, from Brighton, said:

“I’m marching today with Just Stop Oil to demand that the government stops all new oil and gas licensing. We are on track for devastating climate chaos, food scarcity, water scarcity, hundreds of millions of climate refugees- leading to conflict and war. It’s already happening. As a parent, I can’t sit by and watch as the government actively makes the situation worse by issuing more oil, gas and coal licences. This is the complete opposite of what we need to do.”

“When my children ask me what I was doing when there was still a chance to prevent the worst effects of climate breakdown. I will say I tried everything I could. Rishi Sunak and Grant Schnapps, what will you say to your children when they ask you the same question? You have the power to stop all new oil and gas licences. For the sake of your children and their generation, make the right choice. Be on the right side of history, be able to look at your children and say, ‘I did what I could’.”

Yesterday, James Hansen, the US scientist who alerted the world to the greenhouse effect in the 1980s said “we are damned fools” for not acting upon warnings over the climate crisis. Hansen, whose testimony to the US Senate in 1988 is cited as the first high-profile revelation of global heating, warned in a statement with two other scientists that the world was moving towards a “new climate frontier” with temperatures higher than at any point over the past million years, bringing severe impacts such as stronger storms, heatwaves and droughts, which will lead to millions unable to eat and forced to flee their homes.