Extinction rebellion

A study has shown that protestors who took part in Extinction Rebellion’s demonstrations last year were overwhelmingly middle-class, highly educated and southern. Well, there’s a surprise. It turns out some 85 per cent of the London protestors had a degree, a third had a postgraduate qualification and two thirds described themselves as middle-class. Three quarters of those charged with offences lived in the south. And, if the accents I heard from the protestors as I biked through the throng on my way to work were anything to go on, a high percentage were public school–educated, too. I’d never seen so many Econians — the public school boys and girls who

As we contemplate the havoc being wrought by coronavirus, most of us see mainly sickness, death and economic ruin. Dr Rupert Read, spokesman for the climate protest group Extinction Rebellion — plus sometime Green party candidate, and associate professor of philosophy at the University of East Anglia — has rather a different view. In this pandemic, he writes, ‘there is a huge opportunity for XR… It is essential that we do not let this crisis go to waste.’ Read’s thoughts are set out in a paper entitled ‘Some strategic scenario-scoping of the coronavirus-XR nexus.’ The paper is not meant to be widely read. ‘NB, this is a confidential document for

My parents told me that their wartime childhoods were punctuated by the expression: ‘Don’t you know there’s a war on?’ It was used as an excuse for not attending to something urgent. The modern equivalent is the phrase ‘climate emergency’ (leading to ‘extreme weather events’). This emergency is supposedly so great that billions have to be spent on it annually, leaving little time and money for actual emergencies, e.g. floods. The stupidity of XR digging up the lawn outside the gate of Trinity College, Cambridge, needs no further comment. The event does bring home our cultural change. Shortly before I went up to Trinity in the mid-1970s, a few young

Extinction Rebellion (XR) has announced it will finish its ‘Autumn Uprising’ earlier than planned in order to make way for the People’s Vote march on Saturday. The two groups have been in informal discussions for some time aimed at avoiding getting in one another’s way, according to a report in the Times. Even if the Metropolitan Police’s draconian city-wide ban on XR may have made such a deal unnecessary, it reminds us how much the groups have in common. It’s not exactly a stretch to say these two predominantly bourgeois movements may have some crossover in support. Talking to the Times, People’s Vote comms chief Tom Baldwin said: ‘I don’t

‘I wouldn’t be here if you were a climate denier’. This was William Skeaping, spokesperson for Extinction Rebellion (ER), talking to Toby Young on The Spectator podcast. That statement tells us much about the environmental pressure group’s tactics and strategy. It also reveals that, in the battle behind the climate war, Extinction Rebellion has already won. ‘Deny’ these ‘truths’ and we will simply refuse to talk to you. You will be nothing to us. That’s the message from ER. Skeaping’s words were a neat framing of his movement’s preconditions for engaging in debate. The terms would seem to be these: agree that the future of life on the planet is in

I was five years old when the world first ended. That was in 2000, the year that a United Nations official predicted 11 years before that entire nations would be wiped out by rising sea levels. Since then, I have survived the Arctic melting on at least six separate occasions (2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2018), to say nothing of the geopolitical chaos that followed the oil shortages of 2015. As of last year, my troubles have been worsened by the complete submersion of the Maldives, which has narrowed my holiday options. This week, as I ventured into London to shop for a woolly jumper and flippers ahead of