Extinction Rebellion’s newspaper stunt has backfired badly

I believe that halting and if we can, reversing man-made climate change is one of the most important challenges facing humankind in the 21^st century. How we manage to decarbonise our economy while continuing to prosper will be a key element of existence in the decades to come. Yet I don’t think Extinction Rebellion is a good addition to this cause. In fact, I believe the group is now doing more harm than good.

My mind on this was made up over the weekend, when XR protestors blockaded several newspaper printworks, one in Hertfordshire and one in Knowsley, stopping the distribution of the Sun, the Times, the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail. It’s the sort of thing that got a lot of backslapping within certain social media bubbles for supposedly stopping the Murdoch press dead in its tracks. Yet it left me cold and not for the reasons that were mentioned by the government or certain portions of the press (i.e.