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Extinction Rebellion protests make a global impact
The Extinction Rebellion (XR) movement was founded in the UK in 2018, following the release of a report on global warming by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, see below). Members said that the world was "headed for disaster", with climate change bound to cause food shortages and "destroy communities". XR describes itself as an international movement that uses non-violent civil disobedience to publicize the issue of climate change. Organizers say they want to see "radical change" to "minimize the risk of human extinction and ecological collapse". XR’s rise to prominence has come amid mounting evidence of climate change, including destructive storms, floods, heatwaves, drought, wildfires, melting ice sheets and poor harvests.
IPCC report
After the Paris Agreement was signed in 2016 the IPCC was invited to submit a report: "How can humanity prevent the global temperature rise more than 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial level?". Their report, published in October 2018, summarized the findings of scientists. In order to achieve the 1.5°C target, the report said, carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions had to fall by 45% relative to 2010 levels by 2030, and reach net zero by around 2050. It went on to say that a warming of even 1.5 degrees would still result in large-scale drought, famine, species die-off, disappearance of entire ecosystems and loss of habitable land by the end of the century. More than 100 million people would be thrown into poverty.
Three key demands
Extinction Rebellion claims the UK government is guilty of "criminal inactivity" in addressing the climate change crisis and has made three key demands:
1) The government must tell the truth about the scale of the crisis by declaring a climate emergency, “working with other groups and institutions to communicate the urgent need for change”.
2) The UK must enact legally binding policies to reduce carbon emissions to net zero by 2025
3) A citizens' assembly must be formed to oversee the changes needed to achieve this goal.
April 2019 demonstrations
A series of Extinction Rebellion demonstrations began in London on 15th April, with protesters blocking roads at Marble Arch, before moving on to Oxford Circus, Waterloo Bridge, Piccadilly Circus and Parliament Square. Defying repeated police attempts to remove them, the protesters causing widespread disruption. Over the next 10 days they glued themselves to the tops of trains, marched on Heathrow Airport, staged "die-ins" and chained themselves to Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn's home. Other events took place across the UK and in 33 other countries.
The group's tens of thousands of protesters included Hollywood stars and climate change campaigners. Swedish teenage activist Greta Thunberg, who gained global attention after staging a climate change protest outside the Swedish Parliament, came to London to tell demonstrators: "Keep going. You are making a difference."
On 25th April 2019, ten days of marches, arrests and widespread disruption in London came to an end at a closing ceremony in Hyde Park.
Net zero by 2025?
Achieving zero carbon emissions by 2025 would be a huge—some say an impossible—challenge. It would require a complete overhaul of our way of life in just six years, including banning all flights, scrapping tens of millions of petrol and diesel cars and disconnecting many millions of gas boilers. The UK’s Committee on Climate Change has currently set the target of an 80% reduction by 2050. Extinction Rebellion defend their 2025 target by insisting it is driven by what is necessary. Any disruption caused by such drastic measures taken now, they say, would be dwarfed by the consequences of failure a few decades in the future.
The fact that the demand has been so forcibly made, however, may lead to targets for net emissions being being revised for significantly earlier than 2050. On this issue, XR may well succeed in "making a difference".
Aftermath
Media coverage of the action has been widespread. Millions of people have heard the protesters' message that the world is in a climate emergency that demands immediate action to avoid catastrophe. The threat to the survival of humanity can now no longer be ignored by governments.
The protests have coincided with more school strikes for the climate, the rise to prominence of Greta Thunberg (who also took the UK government to task for supporting shale gas fracking, continuing to exploit of North Sea oil and gas fields and expanding airports), the BBC’s David Attenborough documentary, Climate Change: The Facts, and the Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, telling bankers that they can no longer ignore the threat.
Picture acknowledgements (from top):
julian meehan / flickr.com
Ron Mader / flickr.com
DFID
David Holt / flickr.com
Mark Ramsay / flickr.com
Mark Ramsay / flickr.com
Andrew Nash / flickr.com
Takver / flickr.com
European Parliament
Andrew Davidson