Image: Extinction Rebellion
Dear rebel,
India and Pakistan have both been experiencing periods of extreme heat for several years but for many in the Global North, that was a "them" problem. This past month has brought home what 40° actually feels like for those living in Europe and many parts of North America. Suddenly the rights of workers in heatwaves feels like an urgent issue. In the ultimate irony, a London Climate Week event about excessive heat had to be cancelled because of… excessive heat.
Naming extreme heat episodes could be a step in making people understand these aren’t like the old heatwaves of the 20th century - our baseline temperatures have already risen by 1° to 1.5° so every heatwave starts from a higher point. What can one person do? Every time someone mentions the heat, talk about the fossil fuel created climate crisis that is the cause of the heat. Think about your own heat readiness. Look around your neighbourhood - are there cooling centres? Reach out to your municipality and local organizations about how more can be created. Community starts with people just talking to each other. Say hello to your neighbours. Share a story. Look out for each other.
The Newsletter Team will take the month of August to refresh and regenerate. So enjoy our July issue, and we'll be back in September full of love and rage!
This newsletter is brought to you by XR Global Support, a worldwide network of rebels who help our movement grow and need money to continue this crucial work.
BEST HOLIDAY GIFT EVER: A LIVEABLE PLANET
Action Highlight
June 2026 | XR UK
Image: XR UK
It’s Hotter than Hell – community heatwave resilience
The latest resource on XR UK’s Rebel Toolkit page is a very timely handout to print and share, with tips to help your community prepare for, and stay safe during, heatwaves.
For individual households, there are also some low-cost, low-effort DIY ways to keep your home cooler in hot weather. One simple, yet effective tip consists of smearing natural yoghurt on your windowpanes so the glazing reflects solar heat. Who knew?
The Rebel Toolkit page also has other downloadables to prompt conversations about resilience among your communities and neighbours. For real-world ways to prepare in the event of climate-related disruptions or system failures, check out the comprehensive XReadiness Guide. Remember, strong connections with the people around you make for one of the most powerful forms of resilience.
Action Update
June 2026 | XR Beni
Image: XR Beni
NTSP Coalition Urge DRC and Uganda to Reject Oil Expansion
Beni Rebels and the Congo Basin Alliance, part of the Notre Terre Sans Pétrole (NTSP) coalition, have joined forces with Stop EACOP partner organisations to send an open letter, signed by 65 organisations, to DRC President Félix Tshisekedi and Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni. The letter voices concern over talks to expand oil development in the Albertine Graben and Lake Albert region of western Uganda, and warns against letting existing infrastructure like EACOP become a gateway for pushing oil operations deeper into the DRC.
The letter follows Tshisekedi's May 2026 visit to Kampala, where he proposed jointly developing the shared Albertine Graben reservoir and channelling DRC's crude through Uganda's existing pipeline.
The concern for the communities and campaigners behind this letter is about the future of one of the world's most biodiverse ecosystems. The Congo Basin and Lake Albert region hold irreplaceable rainforest, along with freshwater sources, and countless species and communities whose survival depends on this land staying intact. Going ahead with such a project pushes this fragile region towards the point of no return.
Read the letter | Sign the letter
For more about XR Rebel Actions around the world, follow @extinctionrebellion
Positive News
‘An equal and habitable world is possible’: academics set out sweeping vision for planetary survival | The Guardian
A new Global Justice Report from the World Inequality Lab (WIL) offers an optimistic vision for the future, arguing that it is possible to create a world where both people and the planet thrive. Rather than presenting climate action and economic development as competing priorities, the report demonstrates that the two can go hand in hand. According to the report, global living standards could improve significantly while keeping global warming below 2°C. Researchers suggest that with ambitious international cooperation, cleaner energy systems, fairer economic policies, and more sustainable patterns of consumption, nearly everyone could enjoy a better quality of life by the end of the century.
The vision also includes reducing extreme inequality by ensuring wealth and opportunities are shared more fairly across countries and communities. The report highlights the potential for shorter working hours, greater investment in healthcare and education, and improved gender equality, creating societies that are healthier, more resilient, and more inclusive. Importantly, the researchers emphasise that the resources and technology needed to achieve these goals already exist. What is needed most is political will and global collaboration. At a time when discussions about climate change can often feel overwhelming, the report provides a hopeful reminder that a sustainable, equitable, and prosperous future remains within reach if governments, businesses, and citizens commit to bold and coordinated action.
2025 Imagine Contest Collection - Grist
Imagine 2200: Climate Fiction for Future Ancestors is a climate fiction initiative from Grist. While Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organisation dedicated to climate reporting, they built this project on a simple belief: facts alone don’t always have an impact on people the way stories do.
The collection pulls in voices from around the world, particularly from communities most affected by climate change. What stands out most is the diversity. Twelve stories scatter across genres, geographies, and emotional registers, making the collection a colourful range through folklore, food, family, ecology, migration, and memory. Every writer worked from the same prompt, "imagine a livable future," and each one arrived somewhere completely their own. In a world where AI-generated media is taking centre stage and originality is taking a backseat, Imagine 2200 is proof that we still have so much imagination left in us. Read the full collection.
Must Reads
World’s largest banks pledged $906bn to fossil fuel companies in ‘unfathomable’ increase in 2025, report finds
While the world races to tackle the climate crisis, the latest Banking on Climate Chaos report reveals that the world's 65 biggest banks poured a staggering $906 billion into fossil fuel companies in 2025, which is an 8% increase from the previous year. As governments and businesses commit to net-zero targets, environmental advocates argue that continued investment in coal, oil, and gas undermines global climate efforts. The report is a timely reminder that where money flows matters, and that banks have a critical role to play in accelerating the shift towards renewable energy and a low carbon economy. Read more about it here.
Opposition and apathy - understanding the real threats to Net Zero - PersuasionUK
In 2019, Theresa May’s government formalized a strategy to achieve equilibrium in the UK’s emissions of greenhouse gases, aiming to reach “Net Zero” by 2050. The route to this goal is a mass decarbonisation of the UK economy by shifting away from fossil fuels in favour of more sustainable energy sources, and the absorption of what little emissions may remain via carbon sinks and carbon capture.
Despite over 100 countries following suit with their own Net Zero promises, the Conservative party and Reform UK are now openly pushing to abandon the policy. Yet the anti-Net Zero sentiment voiced by the right wing political elites does not currently seem to reflect public attitudes, as discovered through this recent research by IPPR. Rather, the majority of British citizens are in favour of the Net Zero mission. Right-leaning media further distorts the narrative, and in 2025 was found to be 160% more negative about the necessity and achievability of Net Zero than public opinion.
The polarisation amongst politicians is problematic and reduces climate change to a partisan issue, whereas voters may not necessarily view global warming as part of the left/right binary so prevalent in the UK’s current divisive party politics. Far right voter opinion is at risk of being swayed by allegiance to a chosen party and shifting to share their antagonistic stance on Net Zero. Left wing parties may be misled by the negativity dominating the news and discussions in parliament, and therefore dilute their climate change politics in response to this illusory backlash. Such consequences pose multiple dangers to the momentum of public concern about climate change at a crucial time.
This Month's Suggested Action
Once again, we'd like to suggest something simple you can do to get started as an activist if handcuffing yourself to airplanes and such isn't quite your speed. This month's suggestion starts with lifestyle changes—you know, the kind we've been told would solve all environmental problems if only everyone would do their part (as if corporate action and government inaction had nothing to do with said problems). It just doesn't end there.
Sit down, take a look at your life, and figure out what changes could shrink your carbon footprint. Maybe if you took public transit to work instead of driving, or ate locally, or used solar power for all your electricity needs you could live more sustainably?
You'll probably discover that at least some of those changes are impossible.
You can't take public transit because there isn't any in your area. You can't eat locally-grown foods because there aren't any or because they're too expensive. Solar power isn't an option. And on and on.
Congratulations; you've found something you can work on!
Wherever you find a structural barrier to living sustainably is a place you can get to work removing those barriers for yourself and for other people. It's OK if you don't know what to do at first. Start where you are with what you know and go from there. Learn about your situation. Ask “why” a lot. Find other people in your area working on the same issue or related issues and work with them. Be flexible—your objective might change as you learn more, and that's OK. The point is to get started.
Watch: The Welcome Table
Josh Fox, known for his award winning documentary “Gasland”, has just launched a new documentary called The Welcome Table. Partly filmed on a levee in New Orleans, this two hour film wanders around the world telling the stories of a group of people who have been displaced by the climate crisis. Interwoven with the moving narratives of how they each lost their homes, there are musical pieces and facts about the impact of the climate crisis on migration and refugees. For example, the 1951 UN Convention on Refugees defines the criteria for refugee status - but the climate crisis is not one of them. Losing a home and community to a wildfire, flood, mudslide or drought - none of that qualifies a person for refugee status. Fox makes it clear, like this past month’s heatwaves, that the impacts of the climate crisis will be felt by everyone, no matter where you are in the world. We are all in the same boat.
HBO's Powerful Climate Documentary Everyone Needs to See | The Welcome Table Official Trailer HBO
Ancestors of XR: Ken Saro-Wiwa (1941-1995)
Nigerian writer Ken Saro-Wiwa was an environmental and human rights activist, born in Ogoniland (present-day Rivers State) in the Niger Delta in 1941. He was executed by General Sani Abacha’s military regime in 1995, alongside eight other activists, and his name has become synonymous with the struggle for environmental justice, human rights and corporate accountability.
Saro-Wiwa first found fame with his satirical writings. His best-known book, Sozaboy (1985), is a darkly comic anti-war novel written in what he called “rotten English”, rejecting the colonizers’ language. In the 1980s, he produced the massively popular Basi & Company, a TV sitcom lampooning corruption and its consequences in oil-rich Nigeria. He knew his subject, having served as a junior administrator in the Bonny oil field and seen firsthand how oil extraction operations degrade the land, erode livelihoods and disrupt the social fabric of local communities.
In the 1990s, he turned from satire to human rights and environmental activism, leading the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People. MOSOP campaigned non-violently against the activities of big multinationals (particularly Royal Dutch/Shell), demanding more political autonomy and a fair share of oil revenues for local people. Protests included peaceful marches attended by up to 300,000 Ogoni people, which drew international attention to the human rights violations in the Niger Delta. Nigeria’s military dictatorship responded brutally, cracking down on the protesters (although the oil companies denied any involvement).
In 1994, Saro-Wiwa and eight fellow activists were arrested for murder and convicted by a secret military tribunal, despite evidence that they were innocent and the charges were politically motivated. They were sentenced to death, in a trial that was widely criticized by foreign human rights groups. The men were hanged in 1995 in Port Harcourt, provoking a storm of outrage worldwide over what was widely considered “judicial murder”. South Africa’s President Nelson Mandela demanded Nigeria’s suspension from the Commonwealth, which lasted for more than three years.
Ken Saro-Wiwa’s execution came to symbolize the global struggle against environmental injustice and repression, exposing how ecological harms are often disproportionately borne by marginalized communities and how deeply intertwined environmental protection is with human rights, democracy, equity, and corporate accountability. Thirty years later in 2025, President Bola Tinubu posthumously pardoned “the Ogoni Nine” as part of Nigeria's annual Democracy Day, but since a pardon implies guilt, many feel it doesn’t fully address the historic injustice done to Ken Saro-Wiwa and the rest of the Ogoni Nine.
From our Readers
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