Extinction Rebellion

This is meant to hit hard, and I hope it does. It’s my analysis of how, faced with the the gravest threat humanity has ever experienced — wildly accelerating climate collapse, which will make the planet uninhabitable for humans, and probably in the not too distant future — our leaders have, instead, suffered a massive psychic collapse, unable to accept that, as I describe it, “everything our neoliberal societies have worshipped and profited from over the last 40 years is killing us”, and have “collectively retreated into a broken psychic landscape in which, as so often in human history, if faced with something uncomfortable — as, in this case, our own wilful and self-imposed extinction — they have chosen to slaughter everyone instead, and to lay waste to human environments to make them uninhabitable.”

My response to the draconian and vindictive sentences — the longest ever handed down in the UK for non-violent protest — delivered by a British judge, Christopher Hehir, to five climate activists yesterday. Their crime? Taking part in a Zoom call to plan disruption to the M25 to highlight the climate crisis and to get the British government to commit to a ban on new oil and gas extraction in the UK. The sentences — of four and five years — are, as Michel Forst, the UN rapporteur for environmental defenders, explained, “purely punitive and repressive.” The reason Judge Hehir was empowered to deliver such punitive sentences was because of two horrendous Acts of Parliament, passed by the recently departed Conservative government, via two malignant home secretaries, Priti Patel and Suella Braverman, which specifically targeted the right to protest, and essentially criminalised non-violent, mildly disruptive protest. This legislation needs to be overturned by the new Labour government, but as I explain in my article, I fear that “Keir Starmer — and Yvette Cooper, the new home secretary — fundamentally share the contempt Patel and Braverman had for any kind of protest that causes any kind of inconvenience whatsoever.” The right to engage in non-violent, mildly disruptive protest is at the heart of what separates supposed liberal democracies from autocratic regimes, and it is crucial that it is upheld in the UK, because, otherwise, those engaged in its suppression, to preserve a cosy capitalist status quo, are failing to accept that it is precisely this status quo that is killing us all, because, as I also explain, “man-made climate collapse is the greatest threat humanity has ever known, as is demonstrably true, and as is becoming ever more apparent with every passing day.”

My report about ‘Restore Nature Now’, a massive march and rally in London on June 22 calling for the urgent protection of bio-diversity, which was initiated by the beloved environmentalist Chris Packham, but which, because it was family-friendly and non-confrontational, was almost completely ignored by the mainstream media, unlike the global coverage days before, when two Just Stop Oil activists sprayed harmless cornstarch-based orange paint on Stonehenge, and were compared to ISIS. Although catastrophic climate collapse is already happening — and much earlier than the warnings made by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2018, when we were warned that we had until 2030 to reduce emissions by 45% by 2030 to keep alive the prospect of a liveable planet — climate protest is in a parlous state, either sidelined or ignored when it is peaceful, like ‘Restore Nature Now’, or subject to hysteria and hyperbolic outrage when it involves even the mildest disruptive forms of direct action, along with the almost certain prospect of arrest, and possibly prison sentences, because of draconian laws passed in recent years aimed solely at climate protestors. Reviewing the last three decades of climate protest, I conclude that direct action remains the best way to try to effect change, but I struggle to understand how it can be undertaken when it faces increasingly draconian responses from government, and continued indifference or psychopathic hostility from the media and from the bitter and twisted ‘armchair warriors’ of social media. We truly seem to be living in the most demented end times imaginable, just a few years away from major collapse, and yet still encouraged to consume like never before, not to question the insanity of our leaders’ inaction, nor to question their psychically broken response — not dealing with the threat, but instead transferring all our energies into hideous proxy wars, in Ukraine and in Gaza, while our leaders prop up a neoliberal model that is so broken that ordinary people, confused and angry, are everywhere retreating into the false comforting arms of fascists with their dangerous explanations that the blame lies entirely with “the other”: immigrants, Muslims, and, increasingly I fear, everyone on the left. This is not a comforting time to be alive, and those of us with functioning brains, and with empathy, need to start working together like never before to create genuine solidarity as our civilisations collapse and the far-right become ever more empowered.

In my latest article about Israel’s genocide in Gaza, I examine a little-discussed aspect of Israel’s actions — the lack of an exit strategy. With no prospect of any other countries accepting the population of the Gaza Strip as refugees, I conclude that Israel’s genocidal actions are actually a “final solution” to the Palestinian “problem”, and that President Biden, who leads the west’s largely unconditional support for Israel, also endorses this approach. Criticizing western leaders for the emptiness of their support of Israel’s “right to defend itself”, I also condemn their refusal to recognize that Israel’s two stated aims — to “destroy” Hamas and to free the hostages seized on October 7 — are either unworkable or self-defeating, and conclude my analysis by comparing how the west’s position on Israel is as dangerous and irresponsible as its failure to take climate collapse seriously, and warn that, by allowing Israel to so blatantly shred international humanitarian law, and by using fake antisemitism claims to suppress dissent and to further stifle protest, they are ensuring that, not only is nowhere in Gaza safe, but nowhere in the west is safe either — not from any external “terrorist” threat, but from our own governments.

My reflections, at the end of an unprecedented summer of catastrophic, human-induced climate chaos, about what we can do and how we can cope with ever-increasing climate collapse in the face of a persistent refusal, by politicians and the media, to respond to the gravest existential threat in all our lifetimes with anything resembling the urgency that is required.

As heatwaves of unprecedented ferocity grip much of the world, I ask why it is that the mainstream media are still unable to recognise that climate collapse is the biggest disaster in all of our lifetimes, and that they have an obligation to cover it as much as possible, particularly in the absence of any meaningful action from our political leaders.

My review of four decades of repressive public order legislation by the Tories, marking the 38th anniversary of the Battle the Beanfield, running from the 1986 Public Order Act to the 1994 Criminal Justice Act, and on to the 2022 Police, Crime Sentencing and Court Act and the latest version of the Public Order Act. Aimed at criminalising the way of life of Gypsies and Travellers, the legislation is also aimed at criminalising any form of even mildly disruptive protest, of the kind currently being undertaken by climate protestors, whose actions would chime with the beleaguered travellers, festival-goers and environmental activists of 38 years ago.

The text of ‘We Can’t Trust the Weather Any More’, my first ever public speech about the climate crisis, which I made during Extinction Rebellion’s ‘The Big One’, on April 21, outside 55-57 Tufton Street, the home of opaquely-funded right-wing ‘libertarian’ think-tanks that are actively committed to maintaining the murderous status quo, including denying the reality of catastrophic climate change.

My photos of, and my report about the inspiring four-day protest, ‘The Big One’, in London on April 21-24, initiated by Extinction Rebellion but with the support of over 200 other organisations. I applaud the efforts to create a wider climate movement, whilst also recognising the impact that can be achieved through disruptive tactics, and I question on what basis mainstream media broadcasters thought it was appropriate to behave as though this astonishing gathering of climate activists wasn’t newsworthy.

My reflections on David Attenborough’s ‘Wild Isles’ Series, and, in particular, the additional episode, ‘Saving the Wild Isles’, which was only made available online. While applauding his efforts to get people involved in climate action, and particular in ‘rewilding’, I also can’t help but note that urgent and concerted direct action is also required to overcome our government’s continued support for our sewage-spilling privatised water companies, and for new oil, gas and coal extraction, and urge people to join Extinction Rebellion’s ‘The Big One’ protest in London on April 21.