LONDON (UK) – British environmental activist Blue Sandford turned 17 in police custody after she began an indefinite school strike last year. Now, the teenager has written a book for her peers who wish to act on climate change but are unsure of where to begin.
Her book “Challenge Everything” was published in Europe and North America on Tuesday and in it she explains how the failure of governments to take notice of the warnings of climate scientists prompted her to join civil disobedience movement Extinction Rebellion, which has come out with a fresh round of protests in the country.
Sandford was arrested last October for blocking a road in London’s Trafalgar Square during a demonstration. She unveils her plans for a sustainable society rooted in a sense of community and connected to nature in her book.
“We can’t all just go and get arrested and that will be the end of the story,” said Sandford, 17, who was arrested again at the end of August in Parliament Square where the Extinction protests are taking place.
“I think we need to start from a place of science and empiricism and figure out the truth about the climate and ecological crisis, and then act.”
She spent much of her life with her family on a farm on an Inner Hebrides island off the Scottish coast and attended school in London.
She quit formal education in June last year in solidarity with Friday afternoon strikes inspired by Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg.
Sandford has joined protests to try to stop a woods outside London where she used to play as a child, from being felled for a high-speed rail link known as HS2.
“I don’t really want to be a climate-change activist,” Sandford said. “I feel like I’ve sort of been forced into it because nothing else is working.”