'We can't let ourselves feel hopeless about the climate'

As the general election looms, Mark Beaumont talks climate activism with Simon Pegg, Sophie Duker and Will McCallum on location in the Greenpeace Field at Glastonbury Festival

- Mark Beaumont

Five days to save the planet? Perhaps not, but glancing around at the Vote for Climate slogans emblazoned across the Greenpeace Field from Terror Slide to Rave Tree is a wake-up call that 4 July might prove a make-or-break point in the fight against environmental devastation.

“This election is going to be a fairly defining one for the climate,” says Greenpeace co-executive director Will McCallum, sat in the shadow of the gigantic tree-cum-DJ booth that symbolises this party’n’politics heart of Glastonbury Festival. “This government is going to oversee most of the transition, or not. And what we’re seeing is that none of the major parties are really prioritising climate.”

Even before the election was called, the activists who bring this vital and wonderful space to life each year were engaged in a 2024 campaign called Project Climate Vote, intended to alert the major parties to rising public concern.

“It’s very clear that, at a leadership level, it’s not one of the things they think people care about when they’re voting,” McCallum argues. “So this was a campaign to get people to vocalise what they say in the polls on the doorstep: to actually say, ‘The climate is something that I think about when I’m voting.’”

It also aims to combat voter apathy on this long-fuse topic: “We wanted to use this field as a chance to say to people, ‘Next week is one of those major chances where you can make a difference.’”

The message, as ever, comes wrapped in one of the most enjoyably inventive, eclectic and unmissable schedules on site. At any time of the day or night you might stumble on a Confidence Man takeover, a Frank Turner secret set, or, as on Friday, a legendary meeting between iconic activist and primatologist Dr Jane Goodall and Indigenous Brazilian environmentalist Chief Raoni.