Quotes from Gail Bradbrook

If your government isn't protecting you and the future of your kids, you have a duty to rebel, and a right to rebel.

What I would say is that in its first iteration, Extinction Rebellion is really about democracy, by calling in for these new democratic forms for people to have their power. And frankly, in many countries of the world, democracy is in just absolute shambles.

But the main thing is to give people permission to feel it and to put grief at the heart of what Extinction Rebellion's about.

We had a 25-step process coming up with the name Extinction Rebellion.

I do have a rebellious spirit.

I am no longer a scientist as I stopped in 2000. Science was quite a testing place to be as a working-class woman.

The economic system is acting like a cancer on humanity. The regulatory system, the accountants, the legal firms support the metastasizing of this cancer.

What happens if you stand passively by the side of the road with a placard saying, you know, 'Stop climate change' is you just get ignored. When you get on the street and block it, people start to have a conversation about this existential situation that we're in.

Human extinction in our children's lifetime, it should be your top news item every single day, what's happening, you should be holding politicians to account.

We are killing life on Earth, we're in the sixth mass extinction event and it's possible that human beings will go extinct. We're in a culture that doesn't want you to think about that.

I did yoga in the cell, meditated, and slept well; somebody brings you some food and drink. I've been arrested four times now.

I planted trees but the idea that you can offset carbon is nonsense - planting trees is more a way of acknowledging harm and apologising.

I've always been interested in how things change, in social change. I was involved in the animal rights movement as a young woman, I've been involved in thinking about gender and issues around racism and so on.

We're not just being dramatic talking about a human extinction - that's the pathway we're on. We have to look at the bigger picture. If your child had cancer and it was unlikely they were going to survive, you'd do everything in your power to fight it.

I'd been focused on trying to start civil disobedience since 2010. I'd tried many things and they hadn't worked. So I went on a retreat and prayed, with some psychedelic medicines. It was really intense and I prayed for what I called the codes for social change and within a month my prayer was answered.

It is not a campaign. It is a rebellion. We are in active rebellion against our government. The social contract is broken, the governments aren't protecting us and it's down to us now.

Some people see protesting as a bit of a dirty thing, and certainly the idea of getting arrested was not on people's radar.

I have a humble background. My dad was a coal miner. My mum worked a receptionist. I was one of the first people in my family to go to university.

Nothing is being done of any real significance. Our demand is the government must tell the truth about the crisis we're in. And that includes working with communities to build resilience... We want to go to net carbon zero emissions by 2015 and reduce our consumption levels.

We need to go to net zero carbon really quickly. And we're also asking for a people's assembly so people can decide how the change happens. We'll know when governments are doing different things, it could feel like a war, a beautiful war.

I'm horrified to have been alerted to anti-Semitism showing up in a Facebook group I'm associated with. As a busy mum I don't have time to monitor everything.

We oppose a system that generates huge wealth through astonishing innovation but is fatally unable to distribute fairly and provide universal access to its spoils.

I would support a mass civil disobedience where we take medicine to tell the state that they have absolutely no right to control our consciousness and to define our spiritual practice.

For years I have engaged with this ecological crisis on an intellectual level, the mounting evidence, the science... but now I have engaged with the potential destruction of this world on an emotional level and there is a fundamental difference. There is huge feeling of grief, of loss.