July 1, 2019 5.05 pm This story is over 62 months old

Mourners with skull painted faces to hold climate crisis funeral in Lincoln

Pallbearers will carry a coffin covered in wreaths
Photo: Extinction Rebellion Lincolnshire

Mourners with faces painted with skulls will walk through Lincoln on Saturday in a ‘funeral for the future’ against the current climate crisis.

People will be dressed appropriately for a funeral and assemble in Castle Square from 10.30am on Saturday, July 6 in an event held by Extinction Rebellion Lincolnshire.

The mourners will carry Extinction Rebellion flags and tombstones with the names of plant and animal species that have become extinct in Lincolnshire. It will also include names of villages in the county that they believe will be flooded because of the climate crisis.

Apart from music it will be silent as the mourners make their way down Steep Hill at 11.30am. They will head along High Street and end in front of the railway crossing. There will be four pallbearers carrying a coffin covered in wreaths as part of the procession.

Once the procession reaches the railway crossing, a bell will be rung with a roll call of the villages and the extinct species. As they are called out, their tombstone will be “erected” on the grassed area beside the pavement.

Extinction Rebellion have held other events in the city. In March around 150 protestors and students marched through the streets to demand urgent action on climate change.

Around 100 gathered on Castle Hill and marched down to the High Street with placards before some dropped down “dead” near Speakers Corner.

Photo: The Lincolnite

A month later the group were back as protestors graffitied hoardings and the glass walls of Barclays Bank in Lincoln City Centre.

More banners were dropped across bridges in the city centre with phrases including “climate change will affect us all”, “is a council’s duty to the people or the oil industry?” and “time is running now, act now”.

Council leader Ric Metcalfe meets the campaigners from Extinction Rebellion. Photo: Daniel Jaines

The climate change campaigners also protested outside the City of Lincoln Council’s mayor making in May in a bid to put pressure on the council to declare a climate emergency.

Extinction Rebellion Lincolnshire was established in 2018 and has over 840 members in their Facebook group. The group said it will hold many more actions in the coming weeks and months to raise awareness in the county of the “climate emergency”.