Extinction Rebellion’s ‘Shut It Down’ Climate Crisis Solution

Does Extinction Rebellion Have the Solution to the Climate Crisis?

Sam Knight, July 21, 2019 (New Yorker)

“The success of Extinction Rebellion, a British campaign of civil disobedience aimed at addressing the climate crisis, has been something to behold. In April, the group, which was formally launched only last October, blocked Waterloo Bridge, which spans the Thames, for more than a week. Across London, activists glued themselves to buildings, climbed on trains, chained themselves to company headquarters, and occupied key intersections, leading to some thousand arrests and messages of support from around the world…[By mid July, Extinction Rebellion activists were meeting with Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, Parliament had declared a climate and environment emergency, and had convened] a citizens’ assembly, made up of a representative sample of the British population, to discuss the climate crisis…

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…Extinction Rebellion claims to have affiliates in more than fifty countries. Last week, three American philanthropists—Trevor Neilson, Rory Kennedy, and Aileen Getty—set up the Climate Emergency Fund to support similar protest organizations, and pledged an initial five hundred thousand pounds… [It is] the brainchild of a small group of experienced British radical activists…[including] Roger Hallam, a fifty-three-year-old organic farmer from Wales, who is also a postgraduate student of theories of social change…[and] Gail Bradbrook, a longtime anti-fracking and tax-avoidance campaigner, who has a Ph.D. in molecular biophysics…[The activists] have the facts on their side…[The U.N. IPCC reported ‘rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society’ are needed, and the next step for X.R. is withholding] their taxes until the government enacts more urgent environmental policies…” click here for more

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