Extinction
Rebellion has won the first battle – now it must win the war
Leo Barasi
As
protesters take to the streets again this week, the challenge is to force
‘green’ politicians into concrete proposals
Mon 7 Oct
2019 06.00 BSTLast modified on Mon 7 Oct 2019 17.07 BST
Extinction
Rebellion seems to have cracked using protests to transform public debate. But
as it starts another major rebellion this week, it might find the challenge
ahead is even greater.
Extinction
Rebellion’s April protests were an enormous success. Together with the BBC’s
Attenborough documentary and the school climate strikes, they created a surge
in public concern about the environment. The climate emergency is now
established in the top five most important issues facing the UK today, at
around the same level as the economy. Since the April protests, the government
has legislated for net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 and Labour is
moving towards a much more ambitious target.
Few people
could have predicted that a two-week blockade of central London would be met
with so much support or have such political impact. So the natural question is
whether a new round of protests can repeat the success.
The fact
this month’s rebellion won’t be such a novelty could make things harder. It’s
the difficult-second-album problem: repeat your material and you’re boring;
innovate and you may lose the magic. And with the police preparing to move
faster against protesters this time, it’s inevitable that opponents of climate
action will call for tougher law enforcement.
But
difficult though it will be for the protests to recapture the novelty and
public support of the April protests, that is far from the biggest problem.
Ironically, the greatest threat to the movement is its apparent success over
the past six months. If the public believe the protesters have already won,
continued street blockades could look unnecessary.
It’s here
that public opinion turns from being helpful to being a problem for Extinction
Rebellion. The overwhelming majority want action to limit climate change and
support a net-zero target; most even support bringing that target forward from
the government’s current date.
But most
people’s attention stops there. Few people pay attention to the details or punish
politicians who don’t have a plan. This means there’s not much incentive for
politicians to go beyond simply pledging to tackle the climate crisis with
ambitious-sounding targets.
Take the
government’s net-zero law. It would just about make the UK compliant with the
Paris agreement’s goal of avoiding dangerous warming (although it is too slow
for that if you consider the UK to have a responsibility to clean up faster
than less- affluent countries). But the government wasn’t even on course to
meet its old, weaker target; we are nowhere near meeting the new one.
Or take
Labour’s conference motion to meet the net-zero target by 2030. This is close
to Extinction Rebellion’s demand, but the party shouldn’t get much credit for
environmental saviourhood until it shows how it would deliver. Scrapping its
support for Heathrow expansion will be hard enough for Labour – with the
party’s union funders firmly behind more tarmac and more planes – and that
would be among the simplest of the policy switches needed to decarbonise in 11
years.
So apparent
allies of the protesters can actually be a threat to faster climate action.
Emission-cutting pledges can be useful – but if they aren’t combined with a
plan they can undermine the cause by making it seem like the battle has been
won. The next wave of Extinction Rebellion protests will be a success if it
forces climate-friendly politicians to show their proposals. When a politician
says they will stop the climate crisis from escalating, the first question that
needs to be asked is: “how?”
Answering
that question requires politicians to expose the fact that avoiding dangerous
warming will be disruptive and difficult. Many people will look for reasons to
find a way out and so the debate may return to “why?” But this is Extinction
Rebellion’s specialist subject: its explanation of the climate emergency may be
terrifying but it is well-evidenced.
This
challenge – to force apparently “green” politicians to come with a plan – is
daunting. But few people would have imagined that a climate change protest
could occupy central London and be met with widespread public backing. The
protesters might just be the people who can do it.
• Leo
Barasi is the author of The Climate Majority: Apathy and Action in an Age of
Nationalism, published by New Internationalist
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