30 August 2019 — Counter Currents
The rise of ‘Extinction Rebellion’ signals that climate activism is moving up a gear. Further radicalisation is probably inevitable.
Tag: extinction rebellion
What kind of rebellion will save humanity from extinction?
6 August 2019 — Climate & Capitalism
The real power of mass civil disobedience is not its ability to shock the powerful into listening, but rather its potential to draw masses of people into action.
Pip Hinman is a a leader of the Socialist Alliance in Sydney, Australia, and a founding member of Stop Coal Seam Gas Sydney.
by Pip Hinman
Green Left Weekly, August 2, 2019
We live in a dystopian age. Governments have known since at least the mid-’90s about the potentially devastating impact of human-induced climate change. But for the most part they have either disputed and denied this, or pretended to be responding to scientists’ findings.
Netpol condemns calls for expanding surveillance on “far left, anarchist and environmentalist” groups
17 July 2019 — Netpol
PHOTO: Julia Hawkins on Flickr
The report published today by conservative think-tank Policy Exchange, attacking campaigners from Extinction Rebellion, is a direct call for expanding surveillance on “far left, anarchist and environmentalist extremism”.
Some like it hot by William Bowles
18 July 2019 — Investigating Imperialism
I am nothing if not an optimist, a trait that most on the Left seem to share. A belief in the future, that there is one that includes us. That things, eventually, get better, if we fight for it. ‘Unrealistic’, I hear you say, what is there to be optimistic about? The planet is going to hell and taking us all with it, and there’s nothing we can do about it! Well, maybe so, then this happened, a small event, minute even, in the scheme of things but somehow it triggered a response in me that I could not ignore and which I had to address:
Policing in the Anthropocene by Aidan O’Sullivan
4 July 2019 — The Ecologist
Extinction Rebellion (XR) is a direct action group organised on a global scale. The main target of their protests is are national governments who have demonstrated extreme inaction in the face of climate breakdown, despite stark warnings from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
The $5,000,000,000,000,000 Question? By William Bowles
28 June 2019 — InvestigatingImperialism
Apparently, if we add up all the ‘values’ that make up Planet Earth, we arrive at the figure of $5 quadrillion [1]! We’ve reduced the irreducible to the level of an accountant’s spreadsheet. Yet, it’s exactly this kind of thinking that’s created the disaster that, forget 10 years, it’s already with us and it’s been building to this since the start of the Industrial Revolution approximately 200 years ago.
The Monkey’s Face. The Climate Crisis is Destroying “Real Environmentalism” By John Steppling
27 June 2019 — Greanville Post
Environmental activists have a tough time attracting serious and consistent media attention. And we know what the media does do with its time. (WWF, via flickr)
“The more reified the world becomes, the thicker the veil cast upon nature, the more the thinking weaving that veil in its turn claims ideologically to be nature, primordial experience.” — Theodor Adorno (Critical Models)
“Nature contains, though often unnoticed, an extraordinary amount of human history.” — Raymond Williams (Culture and Materialism, 2005)
“It is obvious that an imagined world, however different it may be from the real one, must have something — a form — in common with it.” — Wittgenstein (Tractatus)
“Year after year
On the monkey’s face:
A monkey’s face.”
— Basho
What I am seeing of late is that the Climate Crisis is destroying environmentalism. What I consider real environmentalism. The Climate discourse is quickly being taken over by monied interests whose desire is to save capitalism before they save the planet. They fly (in jets, often private) to conferences in which avocados (or whatever) are flown in from California (or wherever). And there is aristocracy, literally, in attendance. It feels almost required. The British or Dutch Royals, if we’re talking carbon footprints, are tracking in with size 12 Florsheims– while the indigenous activists who toil and are persecuted in places such as Honduras, or Colombia, are not invited. They are of an other way of life, the life of actual concern for nature. These conferences are a kind of ceremonial environmentalism.
UK police seek to prosecute 1,130 Extinction Rebellion climate change protestors By Alice Summers
13 June 2019 — WSWS
The London Metropolitan Police are pushing to prosecute every single one of the 1,130 protestors arrested during climate change demonstrations organised by Extinction Rebellion (XR) in April.
Extinction Rebellion and the Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism
11 May 2019 — News from Nowhere
This is part 4 of a series of articles entitled ‘Astroturfing the way for the Fourth Industrial Revolution’.
Here are the links to the other parts:
0) Introduction: Some Inconvenient Truths about Extinction Rebellion and the Climate Mobilisation movement
1) Dr Gail Marie Bradbrook: Compassionate Revolutionary… for hire?
2) Political Charities and the Brave New World of Professional Activism
3) Green Gail and the Technocratic Industrialists: Citizens Online’s Digitopian Nightmare
Exactly a month on from the beginning of Extinction Rebellion’s demonstrations in London, the British Parliament has approved Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn’s motion to declare a national ‘climate emergency’ – being one of the group’s three demands. This comes two days after pro-Corbyn campaign group Momentum declared its ‘union’ with Extinction Rebellion in the Guardian [1]. The rallying of the climate movement under the Labour party is an entirely predictable affair. And already we have cardboard cut-out [2] ex-Labour leader Ed Miliband declaring that “Politics needs to be on a war footing to deal with this enemy.”
An open letter to Extinction Rebellion
15 May 2019 — Red Pepper
“The fight for climate justice is the fight of our lives, and we need to do it right.” By grassroots collective Wretched of The Earth.
This letter was collaboratively written with dozens of aligned groups. As the weeks of action called by Extinction Rebellion were coming to an end, our groups came together to reflect on the narrative, strategies, tactics and demands of a reinvigorated climate movement in the UK. In this letter we articulate a foundational set of principles and demands that are rooted in justice and which we feel are crucial for the whole movement to consider as we continue constructing a response to the ‘climate emergency’.
Continue reading
The London Climate Protests – Raising The Alarm
9 May 2019 — Media Lens
The feeling is often there at night, of course, in the wee small hours. But it can arise at almost any time – looking at someone we care about, listening to birdsong on an unusually warm spring morning, shopping.
It is like being trapped on a sinking ship, with the captain and crew refusing to admit that anything is wrong. The passengers are mostly oblivious, planning their journeys and lives ahead. Everything seems ‘normal’, but we know that everything will soon be at the bottom of the sea. Everything seems ordinary, familiar, permanent, but will soon be gone. It feels as if our happiness, our every moment spent with the people and places we love, is irradiated by the fear of impending climate collapse.
Trees don’t grow on money – or why you don’t get to rebel against extinction By Tim Hayward
29 April 2019 — Tim Hayward
Money doesn’t go on trees, and although people can make money out of trees, they cannot make trees out of money. This much may seem platitudinous, but it is worth keeping in mind.
