Cars can wait, our planet can't was the opinion of one climate change protester on Friday evening.
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Climate change activist group Extinction Rebellion blocked off a Launceston intersection for more than an hour in a bid to get the government to act.
Training and outreach coordinator for the group Steve Saunders said other protests had not worked, so the group was stepping up its level of action.
Mr Saunders said the Launceston branch of the group was taking it further with some of its members planning to be arrested saying protests like this would continue until there is action.
"We feel that we have to take these sort of civil disobedient actions to raise more awareness and try and get the government to act more quickly," he said.
"Something that concerns me is when I read the news is the focus is on the actions and not the message that we're trying to get across.
"Science says that we have less than 10 years to fix the problem and currently Australia is projected to way over shoot the targets."
Tasmania Police approved the group's application to close the road, however a number of people were arrested when the road was unable to be safely reopened.
"This demonstration was a permitted act. There had been a fair bit of pre-planning going into the event beforehand," he said.
"It went ahead, and at the conclusion there were a number of protesters who failed to comply with the direction to leave the roadway."
Nine people were arrested, charged and bailed without incident, Mr Smith said.
More than 10 uniformed officers conducting traffic control, and a reserve group of public order management police were used when the protesters refused to leave.
"We had some information that this might have very well occurred, which is why we planned for that throughout the negotiation process and permit application," Mr Smith said.
"We strongly discouraged any law-breaking activity and specified that within the permit activity."
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Mr Smith did not deem the protest as a waste of resources, because of people's democratic right and because their role is to ensure safety for motorists and the public.
"This was purely an operational exercise. There is always learnings from these types of activities. We will no doubt review what we did and see if there are any improvements that we can make," he said.
"As far as I'm concerned it was a well-planned operation and there was lots of cooperation between the extinction rebellion organisers and our people."
About 100 people attended the hour-long protest, Mr Saunders said.
"We want good working relationships with everybody. We're all on the same side for this and we want to bring everybody along," he said.
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