Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
The main argument of this essay is that XR and rebellions like it are almost certainly going to grow in coming months and years as more people around the world become politically frustrated, angry, scared, and directly impacted by inaction in the face of today’s overlapping ecological and humanitarian crises.
The rise of ‘Extinction Rebellion’ signals that climate activism is moving up a gear. Further radicalisation is probably inevitable.
The stakes of course are very, very high, here, because the climate crisis and the broader ecological emergency of which it is only the most urgent part puts the whole of what we know as civilisation at risk. By ‘this civilisation’ I mean the hegemonic civilisation of globalised industrial growth capitalism— sometimes called ‘Empire’—which today governs the vast majority of human life on Earth.
We have a plan: a movement of movements. We want contingents of new rebels from movements ‘allied’ to XR. The peace movement. The animals movement. The social justice movement. And several more. Call it the rebel alliance…
We must do all we can to protect the basic environmental conditions that allow humanity to flourish. In this context, Extinction Rebellion’s economic and political program is on the side of reason, and well supported by academic research.
One of the protesters called out to the crowd gathered on Waterloo Bridge, “If you’ve ever wondered what you would have done during the Second World War, this is your answer.” Fighting evil in the 1940s was not a peaceful, niche enterprise. Doing so today must not be either.
As a parish priest and Christian Climate Action member put it to me, the ecological crisis is also a “spiritual crisis.” Certainly it seems to be a crisis that requires and justifies spiritual responses and resources – a coalition of religion, ritual and rebellion.
This is the conversation we need to begin having, from our boardrooms, to our governing councils — for those of us who have woken up to what is at stake, the real question is, how can I actually mobilise to build the new paradigm?
In this post, I’m going to run through some of the key things that make this moment in history so unique when it comes to young people and climate change.
Would it be ridiculous to believe that not only the third runway will never get built but that one day our children will be able to hear a nightingale in Harmondsworth again because we had learnt to fall in love with the world, in love with life rather than money.
On Wednesday, the House of Commons became the first parliament in the world to declare a climate emergency. The resolution came on the heels of the recent Extinction Rebellion mass uprising that shut down Central London last month in a series of direct actions.
People are coming out of their silos. And if these movements have shown us anything, it’s that if we join forces and mobilise then decision makers will have to act.
