EXTINCTION REBELLION (XR) activists are threatening to stage a global hunger strike next week if their governments refuse to engage with them in climate emergency meetings. 

Members of the movement in Britain handed letters to leaders of each political party today laying out their intent to join the hunger strike starting on Monday.

Activists from 22 countries including Pakistan, Austria, India, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Turkey and the US have committed to the strike. 

The letter outlined the group’s three demands: declaration of a climate emergency, promotion of policies to halt biodiversity loss and reduce carbon emissions to zero by 2025 and creation of a citizen’s assembly on climate and environmental injustice. 

If a meeting to discuss these demands is rejected then the activists, including at least 230 from Britain, will go on hunger strike. 

XR said that the hunger strikers range in age from 83-year-old La Pethick from Britain to 16-year-old Christina Dithmar in Germany. 

Ms Dithmar said: “I don’t want to hunger-strike. I’m fully aware of all risks this brings with it as well as the fact that I’m actually too young to do a full hunger strike. 

“Yet I don’t see any other option, given where we are headed. I don’t want to lie in my bed crying, feeling helpless, not taken seriously.”

The global movement described the strike as a “last resort tactic after more than three decades of petitions, protests and campaigns have failed to secure the urgently needed responses to mitigate ecological and climate breakdown.”

Labour made a string of commitments on climate change in its Green New Deal announced last month, including its aim to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2030.