Today my family and I went on a demonstration. We joined the Wave in central London. This is not our normal Saturday activity but nor was it for anyone else around us, and that was what was so remarkable about this demonstration: families with buggies, children with their faces painted, the retired, the old, the young, nuns and priests - the ordinary people of Britain were on the streets. Some 60,000. What possible cause could entice fathers to abandon their son’s Saturday footie? Students to abandon the college bar, middle England to abandon their gardens? Is it the frustration, the feeling of imminent crisis; the sense that time is literally running out? As demonstrators banged sticks in a rhythmic ticking of time, posters passed reading “there is no planet B”.

“Make more noise!” pleaded a policeman as we walked passed the Houses of Parliament. “We’re a rather genteel lot” I replied apologetically. “Yes but they won’t hear you, stop being so British” was his response.

There you have it: apathetic, navel gazing Britain is moving, albeit quietly and leaders take note. The message is simple – the time is nigh, no second chances, no half-way measures. The solutions exist but they require political will from our leaders. It is time for them to put aside personal political and national interests and to act unanimously for the good of the planet.

Leaders of the world show us you deserve the positions of authority you hold – mankind is watching.

Natalie Lindsay