Extinction Rebellion leaders have dismissed the idea that protests for climate action have anything to do with “socialist ideology.” But refusing to take political positions — and to relate green politics to the interests of the social majority — will reduce environmentalism to an ineffective moral protest.
by Mark Montegriffo
Part 1
This week, another round of high-profile Extinction Rebellion (XR) protests began in Britain. In London, climate activists intend on a ten-day occupation of Parliament Square, as politicians return to vote on the Climate and Ecological Emergency Bill (CEE).
The CEE bill will be moved by Caroline Lucas MP, the Green Party’s sole representative in the House of Commons. It cites two objectives: to “ensure that the UK plays its role in limiting global temperature to 1.5 degrees centigrade” and to “actively conserve the natural world.” The key difference between this bill and other climate emergency motions is that it proposes a Citizens’ Assembly, a consultative group of individuals selected from the general population, with the intention of being representative of the wider citizenry.
The bill warns of a “yellow vest effect,” alluding to a similar initiative in France. There, however, President Emmanuel Macron has accepted just 3 out of the 149 recommendations from a citizens’ commission following the gilets jaunes protests. Although such deliberative democracy has been praised in Ireland, for example — paving the way for its reproductive rights referendum — it contains an assumption that solutions could be found inside the context of our current neoliberal capitalism, so long as the discussion was participatory enough.
For this reason, XR proposes “sortition” — selecting citizens by lot, as an alternative to voting. Doubtless, it is a nice gesture to have citizens discuss ideas for a “just transition.” But any serious radical proposal on climate must recognize that the capitalist system requires extraction, commodification, and, ultimately, ecological destruction — and thus any effective response to this crisis demands a confrontation with capitalist interests.
The absence of these dynamics is where the bill falls short, and so, too, Extinction Rebellion’s own political proposals. As Natasha Josette from Labour for a Green New Deal wrote last year, “what the movement is missing — or not stating clearly enough — is that the climate crisis is the result of neo-liberal capitalism, and a global system of extraction, dispossession and oppression.” Without this, Extinction Rebellion is more of an organization seeking to make a splash in the media, than a “movement” as such.
The passing of the bill would fulfill XR’s third and final demand, which calls for a Citizens’ Assembly with the task of mapping out a road to climate and ecological justice. The demand implores us to “go beyond politics,” but is unclear about what, concretely, is meant to replace it. This slogan, however, is indicative of the movement’s present limitations as led by a broadly liberal tradition. Ironically, it is reminiscent of Francis Fukuyama’s “End of History”: desiring politics but without the conflict, progress but without revolution, and movements but without the radical potential.
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