MY LUNCHTIME runs in London have been joyfully car-free of late, thanks to climate activists blocking key streets . But that’s not why I’m writing this defence of the protests, which were banned this week.

The reason is that, along with student climate strikes, the Extinction Rebellion movement has helped propel environmental issues to be one of the top public concerns. Meanwhile, the backlash has drawn out its critics’ scientific illiteracy and failure to grasp the scale of the challenge posed by climate change, laying bare why the protests, not just in the UK, but across Europe, Australia …