A CLIMATE change activist is staging a one-man protest outside Clacton’s town hall in a bid to make councillors sit up and take notice of the “collapsing” environment.

Steve Kelly, 55, hopes to engage with Tendring Council and encourage the authority to make a climate emergency declaration.

Dozens of councils across the country have passed motions declaring a climate emergency.

In October, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a report warning if the planet warms by 1.5 degrees there would be devastating consequences.

The panel found we are on track to exceed this temperature between 2030 and 2052 if the current rate of increase continues.

At 2 degrees celcius, there would be almost no coral reefs remaining, the Arctic would be completely free of ice during summer at least once a decade and vast swathes of wildlife would face extinction.

The planet is on track to hit 3 degrees celcius at the end of the century.

“I want to get them to understand the urgency of the situation,” said Mr Kelly.

“I don’t feel I am doing enough, but I don’t know what else to do.

“I know I can’t just give up. Every week now there is a report saying the environment and the climate is in a state of collapse.

“We are on track to lose a million species within the next few decades.

“Once we’ve lost them, I can’t see us getting them back. To my mind, this is the most serious issue this planet is facing.

“When I was at the Extinction Rebellion protest in London, I saw one placard which simply said ‘we are facing the worst extinction since the dinosaurs.’

“I thought about it and I had to go up to him and ask him about the semantics of that.

“The poor old dinosaurs didn’t know what was happening to them. We do. That is the key difference.”

Mr Kelly, from Clacton, will protest all day every Friday until the council declares a climate emergency.

Supporters can join him outside Clacton Town Hall, in Station Road.

He was inspired to strike partly by the actions of young Greta Thunberg, a 16-year-old Swedish activist who has forced MPs to sit up and listen about inaction over climate change.

Last month in Westminster, the youngster spoke in front of a packed audience of MPs, officials and fellow school strikers.

She said: “This ongoing irresponsible behaviour will no doubt be remembered in history as one of the greatest failures of humankind.”

Mr Kelly added: “She is an incredible young woman, who started her strikes before the last IPCC report.

“A couple of weeks ago she did an interview where she admitted she could be being naive in expecting change from her protest.

“I think that shows a remarkable level of maturity.

“I worry that only a minority of people are aware of the seriousness of the situation.

“The IPCC has given us ten and half years to turn things around.

“We could be losing millions of people in the next century.

“Worse still, the population will be the victims as well as the perpetrators.”

A Tendring Council spokesman said the authority could not comment on the issue until the election of councillors to the St Osyth ward on May 23.

He added: “Any move to declare a climate emergency would have to be politically-led and not something we can comment on in the run-up to elections. However, we have no issue with anyone carrying out a lawful protest outside of the town hall.”