A former Extinction Rebellion (XR) spokeswoman left the environmental group to campaign for nuclear power because she says it is the only way to deal with the climate crisis.

Zion Lights, writing in the Daily Mail, also said that she had become unable to defend some of the group's claims.

XR "peddle messages of doomsday gloom that alienate" and offer "little in the way of positive solutions", she added.

The group calls on governments to take immediate action on climate change. //

Ms Lights wrote articles for both the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph on Thursday explaining her decision to leave behind XR and support nuclear power.

She told the Mail she initially joined XR because its message was "listen to the scientists" and the role of spokesperson gave her a platform "to talk about what I truly felt mattered". //

Ms Lights, who began campaigning about the environment as a student in the early 2000s, said she also had doubts about XR's approach of telling people "what not to do" and "peddling the notion that the solution to the climate crisis was to turn back the clock to a simpler time".

Writing in the Telegraph, she said the campaigners who argued that we needed to all live with less - as she once did - had to accept this was not going to happen "and look to solutions instead". //

Much of the green movement was "steeped in an anti-nuclear mindset", she said, "when any rational, evidence-based approach shows that a strategy including nuclear energy is the only realistic solution to driving down emissions at the scale and speed required".

She denied she was making a U-turn, instead saying it was a "logical next step" in looking for solutions rather than "shouting ever more loudly about the problem".

Ms Lights said she has since taken a role at campaign group Environmental Progress UK, whose campaigns include supporting the building of the Sizewell C nuclear power station in Suffolk.

Nuclear power is planned to be a key part of the UK's future energy strategy.