Five years ago, on this day, October 31, 2018, XR gathered in Parliament Square…
Declaration of Rebellion parliament square XR https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6hVZVJwM50
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 408.7ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the UK climate movement had basically been evaporated. After Copenhagen, the implosion of the Climate Camp, the revelation of the undercovers, the NGOs, having a budget crisis and not being able to do any real campaigning on legislation, because you never know if you’re going to be that far from an election (i.e. the Conservative government had made some very effective laws minimising the ability of NGOs to speak the truth or to campaign and this is one of David Cameron’s forgotten legacies).
There were, of course, very successful environmental campaigns – fracking was stopped. But over all, on the climate issue per se, nobody was reclaiming any power.
So into that vacuum came Extinction Rebellion, which had been promulgated earlier that year. I remember having seen stickers with the angular hourglass on lampposts in Manchester from the summer onwards.
The timing was brilliant, because it had been a very hot summer, and the IPCC 1.5 degrees report had finally come out.
What I think we can learn from this
Organisations which benefit from exploiting a vacuum often get high on their own supply. They feel that they don’t need to pay attention to the rest of the actors in the ecosystem, because those actors have, by definition, failed. So the tone is very exuberant, it’s very emotion-based. It relies on ever greater amounts of publicity, hope and hype. And it is, in every sense, unsustainable. And so it came to pass with XR, which has splintered into tiny local actions and endless begging emails, while the energy is in its off-shoot, “Just Stop Oil”.
What happened next
Extinction Rebellion occupied some bridges with the agreement of the Met and in 2019, held wildly, quite, “successful” – depending on your metrics “rebellion.” By the end of 2019, it was clear that the moment was passing. The pandemic has helped to paper that over, but now what we’re left with is well, the hardcore of Just Stop Oil, while the rest of the climate movement has not revivified.
And here we are.
See also, my Conversation piece about “what next for XR”
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.