More than 50 climate activists from Devon, Cornwall and around the South West are walking from Plymouth Hoe to Carbis Bay, USA, as they demand G7 leaders to take action over the climate emergency. The group from Protect the Earth will set off from Smeaton’s Tower in Plymouth at 9.30 on Saturday morning (5 June) for a six-day 84 mile Protect the Earth Walk to Carbis Bay.

As a symbol of the threats that the planet faces, the activists are taking a model of the world which shows the impact of 2 degrees of heating above pre-industrial levels. This includes the drowning coastlines and much tropical land, which is becoming too hot to grow food.

“We are drowning in empty promises. The pandemic has proven that governments can take decisive action quickly when they want to. We are walking in solidarity with communities worldwide who are already suffering the impacts of our heating world and rising sea levels. We are highlighting how urgently global governments need to lead concerted, coordinated action. Soon it will be too late.”

Sylvia Dell, Protect the Earth

The Walk will be welcomed onto the Torpoint Ferry and into Cornwall by the Green Spirits, who perform silent tableaux representing the global threats to all life on earth. On Sunday, the walk reaches Looe, where the Ocean Blues, an activist performance group representing the threats to our oceans and waterways from pollution, flooding and overfishing, will process down to the beach in symbolic costumes and walk the globe into the sea.

In Truro on Tuesday, the Protect the Earth walkers will meet up with other climate groups making their way to Carbis Bay for a march through the city to Lemon Quay to hear talks from Rob Hopkins (founder of the Transition Town movement), These Field Have Names (the roads protest group) and a young people’s action group.

The walk will conclude just outside St Ives on Thursday afternoon, where many of the walkers will take part in other peaceful actions during the G7 summit to highlight the need for action rather than promises.