Stephen Fry is calling on British people to back climate change protest group Extinction Rebellion.
He said: “Reasonable people understand that something has to be done about fossil fuels.”
The comedian and actor, 64, has thrown his support behind the controversial group in a new video posted to YouTube as XR plans another protest “the same if not greater” than the Just Stop Oil demonstrations in 2019.
Fry said: “If you support environmental causes and organisations like Extinction Rebellion, people – especially ones in the public eye – want to cry, ‘Hypocrite, look at him, he’s wearing clothes and he’s pretending to care about the environment...
“But the fact is, reasonable people, I think, understand that something has to be done about fossil fuels – most of all about our insatiable appetite for them.”
Fry claimed it is “up to governments” to give up carbon use.
He said: “You need to get them to recognise that this is the most serious crisis that humanity has ever faced and that therefore we should plan.
“We should plan in a friendly way, in a way that involves all of humanity.”
Extinction Rebellion’s protests are often disruptive.
For instance hundreds of activists blocked four of London’s busiest bridges on the first day of the Easter bank holiday in April this year, resulting in more than 200 arrests.
Co-founder Roger Hallam said from October there will be a rotation system in which Just Stop Oil protesters will travel to London to block routes “day after day after day”.
“From October 1 there will be mass civil disobedience in London – assuming, of course, the Government doesn’t stop investing in new oil projects,” he told the PA news agency after making a speech at Glastonbury festival.
Fry acknowledged while disruption “can ruin the way the world is”, its aim is to obstruct a worse fate for the planet.
“But there’s another form of disruption, which is to stop the world going down the wrong path, to disrupt a destructive journey,” he said.
“And that’s what Extinction Rebellion, for example, does.”
“I don’t suppose that what I’ve said is likely to change the mind of someone who finds Extinction Rebellion maddening,” Fry said.
“But maybe it might just encourage some people who aren’t sure whether or not this is the right direction of travel.
“And I’m an old man whose time has passed. But you are likely statistically to be younger than me so you’ve got more at stake, and you’ve probably got more energy and sense too. So bless you and good luck.”
