Straight from the horse’s mouth: Why Extinction Rebellion are disrupting your commute
In response to Eliot Wilson’s piece in CityAM last week, ‘What does Extinction Rebellion actually want?’
Extinction Rebellion protests always divide opinion. In the heat of frustration at another delay to your journey, it’s always tempting to come out against. Like Eliot Wilson in last Tuesday’s Morning Wire, you may dismiss XR activists as trustafarians or hypocrites, claim that their protests are self-defeating, or survey the colourful, creative variety of the XR actions across dozens of different sites in London and conclude that they lack a clear message.
But when your immediate irritation has passed, I hope you will think again.
The doctors who lay down outside JP Morgan to protest against its fossil fuel financing are not trustafarians. The scientists who occupied the Science Museum to protest its greenwashing sponsorship by Shell are not trustafarians. The Olympic gold medallist Etienne Stott, protesting against the Bank of England’s no-strings-attached bailouts of high-carbon industries and 3.5C-consistent portfolio, is not a trustafarian. Nor are the teachers, construction workers, managers, charity workers, or any of the other children, parents, grandparents, and concerned citizens whom I joined at the protests.
Nor are any of them hypocrites. Hypocrisy is criticising others for doing things you do yourself. But XR does not condemn ordinary people for their cars, their gas central heating, or their flights. We recognise that these choices are rational in a system that is designed to encourage them. Unlike the government, which has tried to shift responsibility to individuals (Stop rinsing your plates!), XR campaigns for systemic change, and avoids blaming ordinary people for their individual decisions. It is not hypocritical to try to improve a system that you cannot avoid being part of. On the contrary, it is the mark of an engaged, committed citizen.
To be sure, the trustafarian hypocrite is a comforting stereotype, but the uncomfortable truth is that XR is filled with people just like you who have—finally, reluctantly—realised that nothing but disruptive protest is going to cut through, and are devoting their annual leave and their spare time to engage in it.
The idea that the protests are self-defeating is another comforting story. If they’re doing more harm than good to the cause, that’s an excellent excuse for not getting involved. But the story is false. XR’s disruptive protests in 2019 were instrumental in getting the UK Government to commit to net zero by 2050. They produced a declaration of climate emergency by the UK Parliament. And XR is a large part of what explains unprecedented levels of public concern about climate change in the UK in recent years, creating a mandate for climate action that wasn’t there before.
Underlying all the variety and creativity of XR’s actions over the last two weeks, from building giant tables to die-ins, has been a single message: we must end new fossil fuel funding and development now. What links the Science Museum, the Bank of England, the Treasury, and the City, is their ongoing support for fossil fuels—be it through investment, Covid bailouts, subsidies, or greenwashing. We have known for decades that we cannot continue to extract fossil fuels as we have been and expect to avoid disaster. And a few months ago the International Energy Agency—hardly a radical institution—issued a stern warning that we must end all new fossil fuel development now if we are to meet the Paris target of 1.5C and avoid the catastrophic effects of the climate change we are currently heading for. Yet the government continues to approve new oilfield exploration and the City continues ; and the public remain largely in the dark about all this.
XR activists take no pleasure in causing disruption or in being so reviled. But we make no apologies for challenging complacency on the climate crisis. Most of all, we look forward to the day when such desperate tactics will no longer be necessary.
Eliot Wilson’s response:
“Tom makes a lot of assumptions for XR. He claims credit for the government committing to net zero by 2050; two years ago XR “demanded” a legal commitment for 2025, while three years ago ministers were already openingly discussing 2050. Parliament’s declaration of a climate emergency, a proclamation with no force, was the kind of damaging emission XR should be opposing. And there is no evidence to suggest that XR’s disruptive activism has made people more sympathetic to the climate change agenda; David Attenborough and Greta Thunberg would like a word. But he wants it both ways: XR has been a resounding success, yet the public are still in the dark. The truth, I’m afraid, is that the public is learning from many sources, but being irritated by just one: Extinction Rebellion.“