But I know a real emergency when I see one. It is when an ambulance needs to get through to a desperately ill patient or a fire engine needs to reach a burning building in quick time - both of which are made much more difficult when you have a bunch of protesters blocking bridges and road junctions. And there is the matter of ordinary people needing to get to work. Over the past few days 55 bus routes have been blocked, affecting 500,000 passengers. Commuters have been held up on the Docklands Light Railway, while Extinction Rebellion has threatened to close down theTube system. And what is the message Extinction Rebellion has for all those who have had their lives disrupted? According to the group's co-founder Gail Bradbrook, the protesters are having a "fantastic time" on the streets.
Most of the commuters whose lives these idiots have been making a misery have been trying to do the environmentally friendly thing and taken public transport to work. Some of them who usually use Canary Wharf station have been forced to take polluting taxis instead.
But then don't expect much in the way of joined-up thinking from Extinction Rebellion. Its claims are hysterical nonsense and its suggested solutions impractical. Far from saving the Earth, Extinction Rebellion would, in the unlikely event it were given the chance, crash the global economy.
On the Today programme yesterday morning Bradbrook made the preposterous claim that "our children are at risk of not having enough food in a few years' time".What basis she had for saying that she didn't explain. Yet the fact is that global food production continues to rise.
Over the past 30 years, according to the UN, the number of undernourished people in lower and middle income countries has fallen by 42 per cent. That has happened because the global economy has been allowed to grow.
But it wouldn't be growing if Extinction Rebellion had its way. The group's central demand is that the world stops all net carbon emissions by 2025.
Nearly every country in the world is committed to reducing use of fossil fuels. Britain, for
