Extinction Rebellion is a new people’s protest movement.
Here is what people are saying about them:
Ecologis
Extinction Rebellion: from the UK to Ghana
Can protest groups like Extinction Rebellion really police themselves?
New Statesman
The climate crisis demands more than blocking roads, Extinction Rebellion
Guardian
Extinction Rebellion protest: Police make 14 arrests after thousands of activists descend on central London
Evening Standard
Extinction Rebellion protests block London bridges
BBC
The ‘new’ climate politics of Extinction Rebellion?
Open Democracy
What do you think of this approach? I haven’t come to a view yet.
Regarding two of their aims: The UK public don’t elect green MPs (apart from 1) so why would a citizen’s assembly be any better? Also, there already is an act of parliament to reduce carbon emissions (and we are not achieving the targets in that).
If you’re referring to the protests by relatively small numbers of people aimed at disrupting city centres then I’m not keen. The problem is that everyone has different causes they feel strongly about. I’d be happy to agree that climate change and biodiversity loss are right up at the top in terms of priority for attention. But for other people different causes take priority. Perhaps animal welfare, minority rights, abortion, third world poverty (people dying now), illegal persecution of Hen Harriers, or any number of things.
It’s worth remembering that the fuel protesters blocked motorways a few years ago because they wanted to make it easier to burn fossil fuels and there is a similar protest currently in France. When I worked in Peterborough the cab-drivers would occasionally blockade the city centre to highlight some fringe issue over taxi licensing. If this sort of protest is deemed acceptable and if everyone has their own top priority for action then chaos and anarchy ensues – which is, I suspect, absolutely fine with at least some of the ER protesters.
To my mind if you are such a small group that the only way you can get attention for your cause is to randomly inconvenience large numbers of other people then you are close to losing the argument. And if your aim is to win more people over to your cause you are almost certainly doing more harm than good. It’s not good enough to argue that an extreme situation calls for extreme measures because everyone will have their own view as to the most pressing concerns that we face. It is the height of arrogance to pick your chosen cause and argue that direct, disruptive action is uniquely justified so to hell with everyone else.
Organised protests, yes, and the more people you can get involved the better. Tiny numbers of people irritating everyone else because they think they are uniquely placed to know best – definitely not.
I think that they have generated more press with regards to the climate crisis than any other larger organisation since they appeared on the scene. Other methods have clearly failed to
encouarge our politicians to act.
They have huge support amongst young people who will inherit our mess
Non violent direct action has a historical record of setting the groundwork for national debate and legislation to follow.
It allows those who feel politically alienated and ignored to get active – surely that can only be a good thing.
All for it, no question.
Virtually all the problems we face are institutional, not technical. We are taking Sooooo long to do anything – well over a decade, probably nearer 20 years for bodies like the Environment Agency to start shifting on land use & flooding – totally wedded to hugely expensive hard defences, and no doubt a massive civil engineering lobby has helped stop change.
It’s always interesting walking down Picaddily – what proportion of car drivers do you think just assume they are rich enough for climate change not to affect them ? the ones in the chauffeured Mercedes will be absolutely certain – if they’ve ever thought about it at all. So if Extinction Rebellion stop them getting to that ever so urgent appointment at the Bond Street Jewellers or fashionable hairdresser, great – all the rest of us are on the Tube.
And I’m not impressed by the counter arguments – there’s this modern thing of ‘of course, there will be problems’ which seems enough to stop almost any new idea stone dead. Problems are what we’re here to sort out, and of course there are – there’s no big change without problems, but even on the environmental side there seems a growing feeling of this sort of thing being wrong because its not the way the people who feel they own that space see it happening.
Totally agree, RL. It’s high time, as Chris Packham said, that environmentalists stopped being so ‘nice’. I’m not sure it’s right to think of ER as a very small movement – I think of them as the activist tip of a very large iceberg of people whose patience is all but exhausted on a wide range of green issues.
Having said that, I’m disappointed that so far their activities have largely been limited to holding up traffic – a sure way to brass off a lot of ordinary people going about their everyday lives. And some of their literature is, well, simply embarrassing.
A difficult decision, Mark. Happy to join a peaceful march but direct action I find difficult. But your quotes shows they’re getting noticed!
When I look back at history at the suffragettes, civil rights, the slave trade etc I ask myself if I was there which side might I have been on. Climate Change is the greatest injustice of this age. The country and our politicans need to face up to this reality. The downplay and inaction on climate change is not reasonable. Our marches, petitions and letter writing have failed to work fast enough. The smalll size of the ER is reason why it needs supporting. Direct action does work. People do not give up there freedom for issues that aren’t of great importance. The arrests are proof of the integrity behind this disruption movement. We all need moments of disruption in our lives to bring about change. I am very happy to give my hope and support to the ER movement.
It’s a no brainer for me. The IPCC, which is a cautious organisation, says that if emissions are not drastically reduced by 2030 limiting the global temperature increase to 1.5°C isn’t going to happen and at 2°C and above the risks become increasingly severe and seriously threaten complex life on Earth. There are news articles daily about the current and future impacts of climate disruption and the fact that it doesn’t look like we are going to meet the 1.5°C limit. This means that in the lifetime of people alive now a significant proportion of the world population is likely to suffer famine, flood, disease, war etc due to climate disruption. And yet for the majority in the UK at least there is no sense of urgency. Even some of the comments above show that people do not realise that species are becoming extinct and people are dying now due to climate disruption. If XR can keep climate disruption in the news so much the better. Perhaps the message will get through to people in time to limit the damage.
I am entirely convinced that climate change is a real and present threat to us and to the wildlife we share the world with but I was a bit startled by the claim in the presentation on the ER website that “33,000 puffins counted in the last national census in 2000 have plummeted to just 570 individuals”! The suggestion that the UK now fallen to less than 600 puffins is a ludicrous exaggeration and appears to be a misrepresentation of a (worrying enough) report of what has happened within a number of sites in Shetland as what has happened to the species across the entire UK. I daresay this was an honest mistake (possibly arising from a less than careful reading of a report in the Guardian, 20 June?) but a slapdash approach to the claims they make is simply an invitation to opponents to label everything they say as scaremongering.
Perhaps they’ll be directed to one of the grouse moors where raptors suddenly and suspiciously disappear serially.
I’m proud to say I was on Waterloo Bridge a couple of weeks ago and will be protesting again in the near future.
The IPCC report clearly states the consequences of not meeting the targets. If we do not meet the targets there will be no animals whose welfare we need to take into consideration, there will be no minorities to have rights, people in the third world and the first world are dying now because of climate breakdown. How can we prioritise these issues when in the next few decades they won’t be issues?
Our government and other governments ignoring the issue is a disgrace as is the cover up by the media, chiefly the BBC. We are talking about facing famine, food shortages, mass migration, war and goodness knows what else in the next few decades whether we take action or not and the public need informing if only to decide whether to have children or not.
XR seems to be the only body facing the reality and more power to their elbow.
This movement has undoubtedly been born out of frustration and a feeling that we are not being heard and are powerless.
We live in a world where the media is controlled by a few billionaires, our politicians controlled by a few mega corporations, the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer.
This has to end. Society has to become more equitable. If not, we’re all stuffed, yes, even the rich.
But the barriers to change are huge. Not least because people are so busy with the process of living, they have little time for real thought. Just as the politicians like it in fact.
As to whether ER/XR are approaching this in the right way will always be a discussion piece, but the fact that it makes people discuss it at all is a major step forward.
I perhaps wouldn’t cheese off the people you want to convince by inconveniencing them, I’d be more in favour of finding ways to disrupt the palimentry process. After all, their doing nowt important anyway.
Somebody big needs to step up to the plate. That somebody should be our larger NGOs who now seem to have nothing to lose by getting much more political, but either they have lost the will or can’t/won’t work together on the many issues facing our planet.
So are we searching for a new Bob Geldorf? Somebody famous enough to motivate the worlds people. Somebody with the balls and influence to tell people they must rise up and rail against the inequalities we face for all our sakes. Somebody who, when hearing it can’t be done or it’s impossible, will say yes it can and no it isn’t.
That doesn’t sound like May or Merkle does it? Certainly doesn’t sound like Trump!
So who then? And until that time, do we just sit on our hands or do we give EX/XR our thanks for doing something that we haven’t the balls to do ourselves, do we give them encouragement by joining and being part of the process. Or do we shrug and say ‘just another bunch of hippies’.
This movement can only grow if we want it to. It can only fail if we let it.
Bit like the Manifesto for Wildlife.
I read through the “Candidate booklet” for Labour’s Summer NEC elections not long ago. Of the 32 candidates standing, how many mentioned environmental issues, climate change, or the natural world as an issue that was important to them, or on which they had a track record of campaigning? Answer – one.
The LP appears to have completely abandoned “green issues” and yet there are as many people angry, worried and eager to take action as there ever has been.
The XR movement is very immature, and it shows in both some of its politics and publicity. It seems to have only the vaguest of strategies and seems to have made little effort to work with other direct action environmental groups (such as the excellent “Reclaim the Power” network). So I have grave reservations about it.
BUT if not now, when? As Owen says above, direct action works. We have only to think of the Anti-Apartheid Movement and the Suffragettes to see that. I would far rather upset a few people than go into the coming mass extinction event timidly worrying that tomorrow’s Daily Mail headline might accuse me of being an extremist for blocking a road for a few hours.
Totally in favour of ER for the reasons so well expressed by the majority of commentators above. If they get some facts wrong we should be there helping them to get them right.
Intelligent direct action works….we’ve been playing about with the Titanic’s deckchairs for too long.
Time is clearly very short…
Well if we wanted to really hack people off and persuade them to ignore our demands for authoritarian and regressive control of consumption, production and travel we would certainly want to first show our solidarity with them by blocking roads with the collusion of the Met Police and stealing their time, time which can never be refunded for which theft they will resent us for ever and a day especially as I assured them I was to be taken very seriously because I was Saving the Planet although I have a beard and was dressed up as a Girl Guide and I am sure they will support us in our quest to make their lives even more affected by austerity than they are already because everyone knows that austerity is popular just like Mr Osborne said it would be and after all if we really want to avoid annihilation by 2025 we must stop eating cake and in fact eat much less bread and no meat at all and not go on holiday or drive anywhere to do anything that we don’t approve of in order to signal our green virtue because we got to get to Heaven in Good Time, before the Heaven done closed. Even if they don’t want to be poor and to have no freedoms, people will thank us for this, because it’s for their own good and anyway religious zealots have a good track record for bringing about change even if some people do have to be sent away for re-training and everyone is bound to want to be associated with our cool banners with our stark jagged black emblem on a circular background that we copied from some nice old pictures from the 1930s.
I am fascinated by how many people and organisations are writing about XR. To me, they appear to be the UK manifestation of something that has a different face in different countries. For example – https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/nov/30/climate-change-strike-thousands-of-students-to-join-national-protest
I too, like Jim, was on Waterloo Bridge. I have a degree in environmental conservation and work in the ecology/habitat management sector and I see the continuous reports almost daily of climate change/biodiversity loss/habitat destruction etc etc and am appalled by the silence that generally surrounds this. I signed campaigns, wrote to MPs and got all the usual bland responses. I truly believe we are on the brink of something quite scary, be it climate change or biodiversity loss and I am not prepared to sit on my hands and do nothing. The legacy we are passing on th the planet, the natural world and our children is something I want to fight against
I too, like Jim, was on Waterloo Bridge and was proud to be so.
I have an environmental degree and work in ecology/habitat management and read reports on an almost daily basis of climate change, habitat/biodiversity loss etc etc that I find quite horrifying and the general silence that surrounds it disturbing.
I have signed petitions, emailed MPs (including my own about the people’s manifesto for wildlife and received no reply) and got the usual bland responses.
I truly believe we stand on the precipice of something quite frightening and I am not prepared to sit on my hands and do nothing.
The legacy we are leaving to our children/future generations/the planet and it’s wildlife are potentially horrendous and I’m not prepared to do so without a fight
For some children-led direct action on the climate crisis see this heartening story in the Guardian today:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/nov/30/climate-change-strike-thousands-of-students-to-join-national-protest .
Mark, if you still haven’t made your mind up think about all the campaigning and effort you and others have put into the driven grouse shooting campaign. The RSPB have a million members, a petition that gets a hundred thousand signatures, thousands with a Hen Harrier on their facebook profile and untold numbers of disapproving comments on social media, many threatening violence on the perpetrators. Yet when we have Hen Harrier day events, an opportunity to show our feelings over the issue they are nice cosy gatherings because so few people are prepared to attend. These numbers are so low that politicians at local and national level can rightly believe this is a fringe issue unworthy of their time and we get ignored.
Things are improving, many thanks for that and I believe that given time you will win the battle. But it is taking far longer than the time we have to even start sorting out climate breakdown. I can’t see DGS lasting much longer but I suspect it will be climate breakdown that finally puts an end to it. How many winters like the last one will we have in the next decade and if it’s a few, can the infrastructure around the industry survive it?
In an attempt to stop us killing our planet the long game has been played and ignored for decades, we are now at the point where the touch paper is being lit and the time for polite petitions and disapproval behind the keyboard is over. We don’t have time.
PS Anyone wishing to get out and make a stand against DGS can visit Haworth next week, the location especially useful for anyone interested in the Brontes. https://www.facebook.com/events/2112932102292261/ Wrap up and get active!
We live in a democracy and if people feel strongly enough there are parties that they can vote dor such as the Greens. Why therefore dont the Greens do better in elections. We also need to detail the alternative and consequences of these proposals as they would have a major impact on the lives of most people. Given that UK generates only 1% of global CO2 emissions we have to ask would the actions be worth the outcome. Also ard we sure that EV, are as green as proposed areas such as battery production and recycling need to be clearly detailed. Where is the electricity foing to come from? If we are seroius about CO2 should be be looking at Nuclear Power? WHAT i am saying is if we want to address the problem lets have a serious look at the alternative and make decisions based on reality
Robwat – thank you for your first comment here. The Greens have just done rather well in the local elections in parts of England, haven’t they.
Yes Mark they have and good luck to them if they get the votes they get the representation. The challenge we all have is to trasition from the current situation to a more environmentally friendly situation with a minimum possible disruption to workinh lives. If people are adked to change concrete proposal need to be mafe on how this can be done and the effect ut will havd on their lives.