Yesterday was XR’s fifth birthday, which means five years ago today I posted this article on the launch event. I took photos and my wife did the radio reporting for a short audio series. We sat in the road outside Parliament with George Monbiot. We interviewed Greta Thunberg, who was 15, monosyllabic, and just days away from global fame.
I came away from that first event with a thrilling sense of possibility. Civil disobedience hadn’t been tried in the climate struggle in Britain at that point, though it had in the US and elsewhere, and I wondered if it might make a significant contribution. It had been a decade since the breakthrough Climate Change Act in 2008, and things had in many ways gone backwards under the new Conservative government. The movement needed something bigger, louder, and maybe the colourful anarchy of XR was it.
Over the next few months I took part in a variety of XR activities of one sort or another. Each one was a learning experience that helped me find my place in the movement, or not. Some of them were unsettling, pointless, maybe counter-productive. Some of them were profound and perhaps transformative.
For one of my first actions, I joined a squad of volunteers to hang a very large banner on Westminster Bridge. I asked what the banner said and nobody seemed to know, other than it was opposite the Houses of Parliament and was a message for the politicians. It was only as I walked far enough away to read it that I found that it read ‘Climate Change – We’re Fucked’. That’s not a slogan I’d stand by for its message or its wording, and it was an early indicator that XR was going to be an uncomfortable organisation to defend.
Nevertheless, I signed up for some training in non-violent direct action, and then did some additional training as a legal observer. I was supposed to keep notes on police behaviour, report arrests and work out which police stations people are going to. My first assignment with my blue vest on was an action outside Downing Street, where activists jumped fences and glued themselves to street furniture. It was mayhem, over in a matter of seconds, and surprisingly violent – the police do not mess around with protestors outside Downing Street. My job was over in two minutes as the friends I’d arrived with were all arrested, and I was left with nothing to do except find out whose coat it was that I’d been left holding, and how I would get it back to them.
I later covered an action where activists spray-painted a government ministry and then waited to be arrested, and that was my last foray as an observer. It turned out the trainers had rushed it and there were far too many inexperienced and unprepared observers out there, getting in the way and undermining legal observers who had been doing it for years and actually knew what they were doing. I didn’t want to be one of them and I moved on.
There were some bigger actions that year, such as the occupation of five bridges in London. I took part in these with my children, turning up independently and being part of the crowd, rather than playing an active organising role. Instead, I put my energies into two things. First, I started documenting events and taking photos, focusing on the storytelling. And I helped to start a local Luton XR chapter, meeting with a few friends and pulling things together. We hosted some initial meetings in the park, and I delivered the training on non-violent direct action.
2019 was a big year for XR, changing the conversation on climate change and helping to secure the net zero by 2050 target, a parting gift from Prime Minister Teresa May. Councils up and down the country declared a climate emergency. And XR’s big protests in London were magnificent to be part of – vibrant, unpredictable, urgent. The whole climate movement was energised by them, despite the faux pas by some radical minorities within the group.
There were some local wins that year too. We ran a number of very effective actions at Luton Airport, at airport consultation events, at the town hall and elsewhere. Luton declared a climate emergency in early 2020 and set a target to reach net zero by 2040 – ten years ahead of the national target. Easyjet launched new sustainability initiatives and they continue to do more than most airlines, and I’m told our protests on their doorstep sharpened their resolve. The airport has put in place a ‘green growth plan’ that is both the best in the country and also hopelessly inadequate.
I spent the last part of 2019 writing up my notes, interviewing activists and chasing stories for the book Time to Act, a resource for the Christians in XR. It was done on a dramatically accelerated publishing schedule to try and seize the moment, pulling together over a hundred contributions into an edited collection. With just three months between signing the contract and the book’s release, I worked on it night and day for weeks. I had a couple of days off for Christmas, but the project needed a level of disciplined organisation that I’ve not applied before or since.
Time to Act was published in February 2020, at the worst possible time to launch a new book. Having pushed myself so hard to get it over the line, it was dispiriting to see the book so dramatically overtaken by events. The book tour was cancelled. One by one, every speaking engagement and conference disappeared from the diary as the world closed down around the Covid 19 pandemic. Extinction Rebellion vanished from the news, and the energy went out of the movement.
Yes, XR continued afterwards, though it never brought out the crowds in quite the same numbers. The most radical agitators moved on to splinter campaigns such as Insulate Britain and Just Stop Oil, and the last big gathering was a somewhat muted affair. Our own local chapter lost some key members, one passing away, others moving home. Both nationally and locally, I’m not entirely sure what the role of Extinction Rebellion is today.
What I do know is that much of the practical work I’m doing now is a direct result of XR’s actions during that first 18 months of heat and pressure. Net zero might not have been what XR were asking for, but the UK government set a zero carbon target in response to those protests and school strikes – the first major economy to do so. Net zero targets have spread widely, re-setting the global discourse on climate change, for better or worse. It wasn’t just countries either. Everyone had to look again at what they were doing. The urgency of that moment rippled through companies and organisations, and lots of them chose to step up their efforts.
Locally, our carbon target now informs a host of different initiatives. The council has a climate change team again, and the beginnings of a plan. There’s a pipeline of new projects on energy efficiency, energy generation, waste and green spaces, and I’m helping out where I can. This afternoon for example, alongside colleagues from the council and local agencies, I will be training teachers to develop climate action plans for their schools.
My own work has pivoted from protest and demanding action, to active participation in reducing emissions and building the transition in the place where I live. Without XR’s intervention five years ago, I’m not sure those practical projects would be there to participate in at all. We demanded some stuff, people said yes to at least some of it, and now we need to help out and deliver it.
There’s no alternative world where XR didn’t happen, a control version we can compare ourselves with and establish exactly what effect the movement had. There’s no question that it didn’t get everything right. Its successes coincide with the school strike movement and perhaps that was the bigger driver of change. That would be fine by me. What do I know is that I’m glad I followed my curiosity five years ago, and turned up in Parliament Square.
The Earthbound Report 
great perspective review, thanks!