Writing about the Greenpeace activists who scaled Rishi Sunak’s mansion in North Yorkshire to drape it with black cloth, the Daily Mail headline was:

HOW ON EARTH COULD THIS BE ALLOWED TO HAPPEN?

‘As eco protestors scale the roof of the Prime Minister’s family home, which is a humiliating symbol of our supine tolerance of a tiny self obsessed bunch of zealots who disrupt everyday life with impunity.’

So I wrote them the following:

With fires, floods and famines already devastating our planet, the real “tiny, self obsessed bunch of zealots” who will make “everyday life” not just disrupted but unsustainable within the lifetimes of children currently in our schools, are the owners of fossil fuel companies; and the think tanks, politicians and newspapers that they buy to defend their profits. People who went on holiday to Rhodes this year will have had their “everyday life” disrupted violently by the impact of climate breakdown. Its time to end the impunity of the tiny minority who are causing it.

And the Daily Express, with characteristic understatement, HEADS MUST ROLL! JUST HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?

So I wrote them this.

Given the increasingly frenzied tone of your articles and headlines on anything related to climate breakdown, and people trying to alert us to the severity of it, I must confess to wondering if your “Heads must roll!” headline was intended to be solely metaphoric.

May I suggest that a suitable set of people who’s head should roll is anyone in government, business or media who downplays the seriousness of the crisis – just ask anyone who went on holiday to Rhodes this year – or slows down the pace of the measures needed to tackle it, putting our children’s futures at risk for short term financial or political gain?

The Express article went on to quote an unnamed Tory MP as saying “I’d say shoot them!” which indicates a state of mind that is a long way from sweet reason.