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Today we’re talking about corporate apathy, regulatory inertia, and civil disobedience. Damn that’s a lot of syllables.

Despite all the good news in the last couple of years, it’s clear that nowhere near enough is being done to combat the climate crisis. Whether you blame big business for emitting to their hearts content, regulators for moving at a snails pace, or the average consumer for, well, consuming, some groups believe that the key issue lies in a lack of awareness.

In other words, we just can’t comprehend the severity of the situation we are in. If we did, there’s no way on earth (literally) that we would be acting the way we are.

Enter Extinction Rebellion

Extinction Rebellion, or XR, describe themselves as an international movement that uses non-violent civil disobedience to halt mass extinction and minimise the risk of social collapse. In other words, they’ll do anything short of engaging in violence to make sure that people pay attention to climate change and take action. And they mean anything. Think Greenpeace on steroids.

Rebellious Protest

In fact, one of the earliest instances of an XR campaign included a sit-in at the UK HQ of Greenpeace in 2017. XR said that Greenpeace wasn’t doing enough and their message has been toned down over the years. You know stuff’s serious when you treat Greenpeace like kiddie league.

You might also know XR from recent campaigns at galleries and art shows. XR took credit for throwing pea soup on a Van Gogh and crashed Paris Fashion Week with their protests. Like a pop star on tour, XR protestors have been gluing themselves to artwork across Europe.

This weekend, XR is running one of the UK’s largest ever climate protest with over 40 additional environmental groups and 30,000 attendees. They are threatening the government with ‘unprecedented’ civil disobedience’ unless it stops supporting the fossil fuel industry. The protest is expected to bring London to an effective standstill. Not my idea of a weekend getaway but to each their own.

Protest Normally?

Critics ask why XR can’t ‘protest normally’. Why can’t they sit with their pickets and come up with witty chants (The Strawman can help with those!). Perhaps it’s a fair question, but in the words of a Reddit user opining on the matter:

XR’s position is very clear. We aren’t doing enough and we’re not on a path to fixing that, and their disruptions are a way to bring attention. That’s why it was interesting to note that on 1st Jan 2023, they announced that they are stepping back from their disruptive tactics to focus on building relationships for positive influence.

Perhaps they were pushed to this decision by polls that showed that they were overwhelmingly disliked by the public in the UK or by new powers the government has to apply legal action. Whatever the source of the change in strategy, XR’s tactic have inspired a number of other groups such as Just Stop Oil who have participate in similar approaches.

As XR takes a seat at the conference room tables, it’ll be interesting to see if their threat of returning to civil disobedience can act as a bargaining chip. In the meantime, we’re sure that we haven’t seen the end of dinner foods hitting classical art pieces…

Until next time,

The Strawman