Banners appeared over the A329M motorway on Friday May 30.
Motorists travelling along the Reading-bound carriageway of the A329M on Friday evening saw a banner reading ‘TAX THE RICH’ on the railings of the footbridge over the motorway. Over the other carriageway, a banner with the words ‘YOUR PLANET NEEDS YOU’ hung from the railings.
Extintion Rebellion says: “In the 10 years since the financial crisis, the number of billionaires has nearly doubled. Issues such as climate change, technology, and urbanisation raise urgent policy challenges.
“Climate change is exacerbating environmental degradation, increasing the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, and by no means impacting people uniformly. If climate change continues unaddressed it will increase inequality within countries.
“Since 1990, income inequality has increased in most developed countries. The top 50 richest families in the UK now hold more wealth than the poorest half of the population, comprising more than 34 million people. According to Dr Benjamin Tippet, a lecturer in economics and wealth inequality at King’s College London, a 2% wealth tax on the tax residents on the rich list would have raised about the equivalent of £6bn per year: £155bn if the policy had been in place since the mid-90s.
“The Equality Trust found ‘The issue of extreme wealth really is existential; for our very survival we need to get serious about changing economic structures and design policies that end the existence of billionaires.
“The richest two people on the 2025 Sunday Times Rich list hold more than the entire 1990 list combined. Just 33 of them have enough wealth between them to meet the entire cost of reaching net zero emissions by 2050 and they’d each have £112m left over.’
“Not addressing the climate crisis will be far more costly than tackling it. The technologies to combat climate change exists; government willingness to spend accordingly does not. With glaciers melting, seas rising, droughts and floods destroying food crops and millions of people dying in heatwaves, activists are urging more people to join environmental groups and put pressure on government to do more.
“The rising cost of living is related to climate change and biodiversity loss and the government urgently needs to recognise that. This planet is the only home humanity has. We could save our home if enough people acted.”
More banners arex expected be spotted over the next days and weeks.
