Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Despite my ambivalence about the demands of UK Extinction Rebellion I am really impressed by the way it has shot the climate emergency and bio-diversity collapse up the political agenda and into the public imagination.
Extinction Rebellion (XR) is an international movement that uses nonviolent civil disobedience to achieve radical change in order to minimise the risk of human extinction and ecological collapse.
I briefly mentioned the Extinction Rebellion climate change protest in my last post. In this one I want to describe what some of my misgivings about it were and how I’ve now laid them aside and embraced the movement, thanks to a few dark nights of the soul and a little helping hand over the line from former British Home Secretary, David Blunkett.
I’ve written this so that when my grandchildren ask me where I was when the great rebellion began, when the great Transition began its inevitable momentum, I can show them this blog post capturing a remarkable week in France
Only in taking responsibility for how our actions leave certain people more vulnerable to premature death than others can we forge climate justice against green nationalism.
The big change since the days of Richard Douthwaite and the 2012 publication of Sharing for Survival is that we now have zero faith in an international order being able to bring this about. Hence my presentation was focused on the need for Scotland to enact Cap and Share and show the way, rather than wait for a global agreement.
We are a proud people, in Scotland. To what extent varies from person to person, but it’s a common Scottish characteristic and one that, at times, is a hindrance when addressing political issues.
And I’m here to say that XR isn’t about the climate. You see, the climate’s breakdown is a symptom of a toxic system of that has infected the ways we relate to each other as humans and to all life.
So what, if anything, sets the ‘extinction rebellion’ apart from previous campaigns? There are at least three ways in which XR occupies a remarkable position in this context, relating to its framing of the problem, its understanding of who has the responsibility for taking action to deal with it, and its strategic call for making those responsible act.
This was the birth of Extinction Rebellion, a movement that calls for mass economic disruption using non-violent direct action and civil disobedience to halt the destruction of the planet and its wildlife and prevent catastrophic climate change.
That’s the point of the Extinction Rebellion. To make us all stop and think – to ask the simple question: Am I really paying attention? To what I know, to what we all now know?
Maybe there’s seemed to be a disconnect between the message we’ve been bringing – that this society is knowingly causing the harshest catastrophe in history – and the actions we’ve been taking? Maybe if the wider public see that hundreds feel the need to go to jail over this, they might start to seriously ask why? With these stakes, it’s worth a shot.
