Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Extinction Rebellion was once criticised by other activists for “love bombing the cops”, but now it has found itself labelled a terror threat. In a guide sent to teachers by counter-terrorism police, the non-violent group’s logo and activities were described to help them spot students who may be involved.
What does a real Climate Emergency action plan look like? The answer is defined by the science − by the physics and chemistry. Some find it hard to imagine this is actually happening. Some think it seems ‘unrealistic’. But ask yourself about the alternative of risking the collapse of civilisation, the death of billions of people and the extinction of much of life on earth? Is that ‘realistic’? No economy on a dead planet.
All agree we need to take action for climate change, but some environmentalists find the Extinction Rebellion’s tactics difficult to get behind. Environmental campaigners Chay Harwood and Marc Hudson provide the arguments for and against them.
XR has tried to put itself ‘beyond politics’, steering clear of parliamentary machinations, in a bid to broaden its appeal and express the urgency and scale of the crisis to as many people as possible. But with the most important election of a generation looming in the UK, is it now time for XR to use its reach to grapple directly with the workings of this country?
This Is Not A Drill has been written to clarify, inform, inspire and equip the people who are undecided yet interested in moving deeper into the climate action zeitgeist XR has ingeniously catalysed.
Nah, there’s nothing deathly or millenarian about the XR activists I know. They’re just ‘ordinary’, flawed, caring (middle-class) people like me, full of love and zest for life, and really, really scared about the deathly devastation that climate change threatens to wreak upon the world and the life they hold dear, unless governments act radically and immediately.
And what I say to those who choose to criticise XR is please by all means criticise us, and come up swiftly and proactively with something better we can do to meet the challenges of imminent climate catastrophe and ecological disaster. I would be the first to be behind you. But if you cannot then I would think very carefully about what you are going to say to the present generation, Greta’s generation, today’s children and grandchildren when they ask, ‘What did you do when we had our last chance to avoid catastrophe?’ Think very hard about that question.
Given that XR’s recent Autumn action did not produce the same level of success and change as the previous actions, we now have fairly clear empirical evidence that XR’s present strategy may be reaching its ‘peak’. If it is to continue to scale as a movement, this needs to be confronted head-on. XR now has the opportunity to review and enhance its strategy, and I offer this critical appraisal in that spirit as a humble contribution to augment such efforts.
This is a love letter to Extinction Rebellion. It is also a letter addressed to those who have criticised us. An apology. A response. And, ultimately, an invitation.
So below I bring you a sceptic’s guide to XR scepticism, in a two-part post that’ll be continued next time. In this first one I focus on issues that strike me as requiring a genuine, substantive response and/or that I wrestled with myself in embracing the movement.
As two weeks of International Rebellion get underway, including protests around Westminster and across the UK, it is time to be honest about climate emergency in the Global South and to take an explicitly anti-capitalist stance.
At the urging of Fleming and Chamberlin, TEQs were introduced, studied, and debated in the U.K. Parliament a decade ago but were judged by the government to be ahead of their time. Now, with a global climate emergency widely acknowledged, systems like TEQs warrant further serious consideration.
