London’s Victoria and Albert Museum has acquired a number of artifacts associated with Extinction Rebellion (XR), the protest group campaigning to reduce Britain’s carbon emissions to ‘net zero’ by 2025.
Apparently, just nine months since Extinction Rebellion’s first public stunt, its paraphernalia deserves to be housed alongside some of the world’s best art and design works of the past 5,000 years.
It is hard to think of any supposedly radical protest movement in history that has been so readily embraced by the establishment as Extinction Rebellion.
And the love-bombing isn’t just coming from the usual luvvies like Dame Emma Thompson and activist celebs like Lily Cole and Charlotte Church.
Recently, XR attracted the attention of wealthy philanthropists. Last month, three wealthy Americans (one of whose family wealth comes from the oil industry) donated nearly £500,000 to XR and vowed to raise millions more.
Other wealthy backers include a hedge-fund manager, who remains anonymous.
Then, there is the literary establishment – from heavyweight authors like Margaret Atwood and Phillip Pullman to big-name publishers like Penguin, it has thrown its weight behind Extinction Rebellion, too.
This Is Not A Drill, XR’s protest handbook, was recently rushed out for release by Penguin.
Penguin’s editor breathlessly declared that climate change was so pressing that XR’s book needed to be published several months before its initial release date: ‘This is an emergency, and we have to react like it’s an emergency.’
The book even features a contribution from Rowan Williams, former archbishop of Canterbury – the former head of the established church.
The reason for this establishment love-in is that Extinction Rebellion represents no rebellion at all. It has the appearance of a rebellion, certainly – protesters glue their hands to buildings, block roads and get themselves arrested.
But the message is one that affirms and flatters establishment opinion rather than challenging it. Parliament, for instance, was quick to heed XR’s demand to declare a ‘climate emergency’.
More significantly, the group’s main aim of reducing UK emissions to ‘net zero’ is one that is shared not only by the Conservative government but also by MPs of all stripes.
The ‘net zero’ target for 2050 was nodded through parliament with just an hour and a half of debate and without a single vote needing to be cast. XR is only more impatient in its demand, calling for a 2025 deadline.
Many have tried to compare Extinction Rebellion’s climate crusade with past movements for progressive change.
Justifying the V&A’s decision to acquire Extinction Rebellion artifacts, senior curator Corinna Gardner compared their punchy color palette to that of the Suffragettes.
Similarly, XR leader Roger Hallam claims his protesting is in the ‘tradition of Gandhi and Martin Luther King’.
These comparisons are delusional, pretentious and insulting. But they unwittingly highlight something important.
Whether it was the Chartists, the Suffragettes, the civil-rights movement, or the gay-rights movement, these genuinely progressive campaigns were all despised by the elite at the time.
These were campaigns that sought to expand human freedom, to wrest rights and resources from the establishment. By contrast, environmentalist campaigns like Extinction Rebellion are, by their very nature, against freedom.
They seek to place new limits on human activity: on the industry, on economic growth, on our travel, on our diets, and on childbirth.
For many years, the great and the good have been in broad agreement that something must be done about climate change.
But they also seem to agree that the bulk of the costs should not be shouldered by them. Only last week, celebrities, business leaders and politicians descended on Sicily for the 7th annual Google Camp, which this year was dedicated to tackling climate change.
After arriving in their private jets, mega-yachts, and sports cars, delegates were treated to a lecture on climate change by Prince Harry, who delivered it in his bare feet.
Earlier this year, 1,500 individual private jets flew to Davos. The highlight of the summit was a conversation between Prince William and Sir David Attenborough… on climate change.
The establishment only seems to care about ‘pollution’ when it is ordinary people doing the polluting. It is always cheap flights, cheap food and cheap fashion which cause the most consternation among environmentalists.
In turn, climate change presents the establishment with an opportunity to manage the little people’s habits, tastes, and aspirations.
Extinction Rebellion merely provides a faux-radical gloss to this depressing and stultifying prospect.
Read more at Spiked-Online
More stupidty The Extinction Rebellion and these two groups of liberal eletists and the New World Order
The whole discussion about climate hysteria is completely misdirected. To get the right answers, you (first) have to ask the right question. Rather than fall into the “climate wasteland,” I think there is a much more productive way to view this entire arena. The conversation, and attendant debate, has to shift to to one fundamental principle: ENERGY TRANSITION and accompanying environmental protection. With the debate properly framed in the U.S, you (then) only have to answer one basic question: “What CLEAN, SCALABLE & SUSTAINABLE alternative do you suggest to REPLACE 95% of our transportation fuels & industrial heat and 65% of our electric power generation? Keep it in the Ground and all the slogans 7 mantras provide NO constructive solutions to the challenge. Vilification of energy PROVIDERS does nothing (literally) other than saw the legs out from under our own table. Drama & theater may work nicely in Hollywood, but it is of little use in the energy transition space. When it comes to PHYSICS and REAL science, I say “more Cowbell”…
Have to agree Randy Verret . The truth hurts . Everything the Extinction folks wear eat or ride came from some form of fossil fuel . Those cute little storm trooper boots … yet petroleum products cooked and molded then shipped on a diesel spewing ship from the biggest polluter on the planet China .
Funny you never see Extinction laying around China where they send the cost of a bullet in your head to your family and religion of all kinds is being suppressed with bribes to those willing rat out their neighbors .
Yes, makes so much sense to protest the people who fought for your freedom and paid for your education . How about protesting the 10,000 per year fuel poverty deaths in the UK perpetrated by clowns who claim humans can control the earths temperature by destroying western economies . All we have to do is” send the right price signal ” .
Wake the F up .
All I’m saying is all this “climate crisis” and systematic vilification of fossil fuels is totally misguided. What frustrates me is that we are not anywhere near the “Start Line” to start moving the conversation in the right direction towards (finally) some form of coherent national energy policy. DC “burns” while the activists “fiddle”…