Meet the climate protest group Extinction Rebellion disrupting dozens of cities

Tuesday, 8 October 2019

Started just one year ago in a small English town in the bucolic Cotswolds, Extinction Rebellion has exploded across the world to become one of the most effective environmental protest groups in a generation.

On Monday, tens of thousands were taking part in coordinated protests around the world, from Buenos Aires to Berlin, Montreal to Mumbai. Before the sun was even thinking about rising in Britain, protesters in Wellington, New Zealand staged a 'die in' outside of a bank and in Sydney, dozens were arrested for blocking traffic.

Since the group's humble start in the spirited town of Stroud with just 15 like-minded people concerned about climate change and habitat loss, the movement has spread to over 70 countries, attracting professionals and parents and grannies and greenies to their cause.

Extinction Rebellion has underscored the narrative of climate change not as a slow burning problem that needs fixing at some distant point on the horizon but rather as an emergency that requires drastic and immediate action.

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Many of the protests starting on Monday are set to last for two weeks and will likely be a major test of the public's tolerance for social and economic disruption.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said that people were free to protest but 'but in blocking people from being able to go and do their day-to-day job doesn't necessarily take us any closer to the climate action they are calling for'.

The movement's aims broadly align with the millions of schoolchildren who have joined the Swedish activist Greta Thunberg in striking against climate change. But their methods are far more radical.

In London, organisers on Monday began a two-week blockade of roads and bridges leading into the Palace of Westminster. Within the first several hours, police said they had arrested 135 demonstrators.

The last time they staged a protest on this scale, in April, over 1000 people were arrested in a police operation that cost nearly US$20 million (NZ$31m).

But it seems their tactics work. It was after those protests, that Parliament declared a climate emergency. In June, the government signed up to a 2050 decarbonisation target, the first major economy to do so.

Those steps occurred in a wider context of heightened environmental awareness, including a backlash against plastics triggered partly by the naturalist David Attenborough. But analysts say that Extinction Rebellion, or XR, also played an important role.

'Extinction Rebellion is widely credited with accelerating policy change in the UK,'said Robert Falkner, a fellow at Chatham House, a think tank.

Extinction Rebellion was launched in October 2018 by activists from a group called Rising Up. Its rock stars include Gail Bradbrook, a former biophysicist, and Roger Hallam, who is currently in a prison cell for his role in 'Heathrow Pause', a splinter group that planned to shut down Heathrow Airport with low-flying drones.

But organisers insist that it's not reliant on leaders. On the streets in London, protesters can join small 'affinity groups', who support each other and communicate largely via encrypted mobile apps Signal and Telegram. Some even crowdfund legal fees for those who want to be an 'arrestable'.

Extinction Rebellion has three demands: governments must 'tell the truth' by declaring a climate emergency; pledge to reach net-zero greenhouse-gas emissions by 2025 and halt the loss of biodiversity; and enlist citizen assemblies, or a group of representatives from the wider public, to guide the way forward.

In Britain, the group has helped bump climate change deniers off the agenda. 'It's no longer a question of whether we should act. It's what's reasonable action to take and how fast can we go,' said Bob Ward, a spokesman for the London School of Economics' Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.

Ward said that Britain's target to be carbon neutral by 2050 is already ambitious and will require massive changes to the transport sector and how people heat their homes.

But protesters on Monday say the government needs to find ways to move even faster and some are even willing to go to jail to drive home that message.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan conceded that 'bolder action' is needed to take on climate change, but criticised the movement for potentially overwhelming an already stretched police force.

The protesters are walking a tightrope - they want to spark enough disruption to effect change but not so much they alienate the public.

Anticipating police frustration, Paul Stephens, 55-year-old retired detective sergeant, was standing outside of the Metropolitan Police headquarters on Monday morning handing out fliers to his former colleagues.

'From their perspective, it's a waste of time; from our perspective, it's not,' he said, explaining that the strategy was to 'create a dilemma for the police' so that they either had to allow the protest to continue or arrest 1000 'otherwise law-abiding people' for committing low-level offences.

What was noteworthy about Monday's protests in central London were the demographics - it wasn't a sea of angry young people in black balaclavas, but rather people from all walks of life.

They included Vishal Chauhan, 30, who gave up his job as an emergency room doctor, where he earned around US$80,000 a year, to devote himself to Extinction Rebellion. 'I love being a doctor,' he said, 'but it doesn't make sense being in hospital treating people for diabetes or pneumonia knowing that they or their children might experience TB, cholera, famine, food shortages.'

Clare Farrell, one of Extinction Rebellion's co-founders, said that there was tension inside the group over tactics. The Washington Post spoke with her at XR's bustling office in east London, where the walls are festooned with colourful posters that read 'Rebel for Life' and others bearing the group's symbol, a circle to represent the planet and hourglass to show that time is running out.

Farrell recalled an incident earlier in the year when activists glued themselves to a train in London's financial district.

It wasn't an easy sell inside the group. 'Some still thought it was radical, some are just getting to terms with the fact they can sit on a road . . . we need to make sure we don't push too hard, too fast, in one place.'

The October protests are the group's boldest and priciest yet.

Extinction Rebellion's head of finance, Andrew Medhurst, said that the group has earmarked about US$1.2m for October in London to pay for entertainment, portable toilets, and meals for around 20,000 a day. He also said that over the past year the group has paid about 190 of its activists, who can claim up to US$500 a week.

Over the past year, Extinction Rebellion has raised US$2.8m through a mix of crowdfunding and big donations from the likes of Radiohead and an American organisation called the Climate Emergency Fund.

Medhurst's own personal journey saw him quit his job in London's financial district, where he worked for three decades.

'I suddenly got a big kick up my backside,' said Medhurst. 'I realised that unless there were drastic changes, my kids won't need a stock portfolio, they will need food and shelter.'