Common sense for the 21st century?

Anonymous painting photographed during Extinction Rebellion action in Marble Arch, April 2019.

There is no doubt that Extinction Rebellion (ER), along with the schools climate strikes (and the Rising Up movement before it) have already ‘propelled’ the issue of climate change into the mainstream in a way that our generation of environmentalists failed to do. Common Sense for the 21st Century; Only Non Violent Rebellion Can Now Stop Climate Breakdown And Social Collapse is a book by Roger Hallam, co-founder of ER, that sets out his vision for this new environmental movement. Drawing on figures from Thomas Paine to Gandhi and Martin Luther King the key theme is that gradual ‘reformism’ hasn’t worked and ‘rebellion’ (the modern, peaceful sort) is now necessary to force through the radical change that is needed. The rallying call is to; tell the ‘truth’ about the consequences of climate change including mass death and starvation (instead of telling people only what you think they can handle); engage in a sustained period of Gandhi style nonviolent civil disobedience (including the mass arrest of its ‘rebels’ as a form of ‘sacrifice’ that will engender sympathy from the wider public - see Jeremy Harding’s The Arrestables); and move ‘beyond politics’ by replacing government with a Citizens Assembly, albeit supported by a Parliament.

This is heady stuff, and in future posts The Ecocide Brief will be taking a closer look at these ideas. The right wing press will of course have a field day with this and it is not my job to reinforce their dogma. However it would be remiss of me not to make a proper critique. For example, it won’t have been lost on the author that the political system that he intends to break up apparently ‘tolerates’ an open call for the overthrow of government. Can he guarantee that a post-rebellion system would be so tolerant of anti-environmental views? [We are aware that the UK government has in fact tried, and failed, to register ER as a terrorist organisation, but nevertheless]. In reality ‘peaceful’ mass protests are ripe for exploitation and infiltration by rogue violent elements (as well as state agitators). What contingencies are in place to prevent that happening? In the booklet the author correctly identifies that revolutions often fail due to inadequate post revolutionary planning. But then fails to provide any real detail here, beyond a call for a citizens assembly. Could this be a double standard of telling the ‘truth’ about the climate situation but only telling us ‘what we need to know’ about the complexities of national governance?

What is clear is that this new movement is seeking to effect radical constitutional law change, and has found an approach (non violent mass civil ‘sacrificial’ disobedience) that is likely to be successful in keeping this firmly on the agenda for the foreseeable future. The Ecocide Brief will be monitoring developments in this area. In the meantime I can do no better than recommend you read the booklet (available here as a pdf) and make up your own mind.