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Why I Was Willing to be Arrested, Protesting Against Tufton Street Climate Deniers
The climate and ecological emergency consuming the world, usually, defies the imagination. It is so life-altering yet so gradual – exploiting the human tendency to ignore things that are radically outside our own experience. Yet, thanks to the Coronavirus, we have been given a small taste of what is to come. The short COVID-19 pandemic is like an accelerated version of the long climate emergency. The UK’s vulnerability has been exposed, along with the incompetence of its Government, and the generosity of its people. So, myself and other activists have decided to use the Coronavirus crisis as impetus to boost our climate change campaigning – putting pressure on the powerful…
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A letter to real power: a letter to us
When I heard that Culture Declares emergency was organising a series of ‘Letters to Power’, I thought to myself: “Rupert, you should probably write one”. You see, I have spent much of my life attempting to talk to, persuade, even beg those with power – our elected leaders, heads of banks and businesses, big organisations or media companies, for example. I have written many, many letters to power before. Though to be frank, it’s been largely pointless; while some appear to listen, most fail to hear and even more refuse to act. Trying once again felt a bit like bashing my head against a brick wall. I felt my enthusiasm…
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Activist engagement with the 'Davos set'
One man’s promise of putting less than ten percent of his wealth towards climate action generated a lot of media attention. It sounded like it might make a difference, as he – Jeff Bezos – is the world’s richest man. Could this be the sign of things to come, as more of the world’s billionaires resist a narrow pursuit of profit, power and fame to try and save humanity from environmental disaster? If so, could seasoned activists like us find useful ways to engage these people and generate a quantum leap in impact? After all, the situation is bleak, and everything should be considered. To expolore this, we spent some…
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Friends In Need
Extinction Rebellion and Davos sound like odd bedfellows. Why would a direct-action campaign, increasingly visible in the United Kingdom for warning starkly about the climate emergency, want to rub shoulders with the global financial elite at its main annual forum in Switzerland? The answer is that robust green activism turns out, when you think it through, to be high finance’s best friend. Extinction Rebellion (XR) is a mass movement which, in the face of the climate crisis, is prepared to take any non-violent means necessary to force a truthful national and global conversation. It’s no coincidence it started in Britain. The Industrial Revolution triggered what has grown into dangerous climate…
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Letter: There’s no extremism in Extinction Rebellion
The Guardian’s recent revelation that Extinction Rebellion (XR) had been classed as an extremist ideology in now hastily withdrawn advice issued by counter-terrorism police (Anti-terror police target school climate strikes, 11 January) is the latest example of a wider campaign seeking to undermine public support for our non-violent movement. In July, we saw the release of a report on XR by the former head of the Met’s counter-terrorism command, Richard Walton, done for the rightwing thinktank Policy Exchange. His report makes a series of overinflated and discredited claims about XR, and it was subsequently revealed that Policy Exchange itself has taken funding from big energy companies. Walton’s report came out…
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Extinction Rebellion: Insights from the Inside
Extinction Rebellion: Insights From the Inside is a collection of essays, articles, and interviews by Rupert Read, a leading voice in Extinction Rebellion, edited and with an extended postscript by Samuel Alexander. The anthology presents an insider’s perspective of the movement from its inception up until the Covid pandemic. It offers both a fascinating historical account of this emerging movement and a critical engagement with urgent questions of strategy and framing going forward. It is published by the Simplicity Institute. To maximise availability and access, the pdf version of the book is available on a ‘pay what you can’ basis (including for free). Rupert will be donating profits from this…
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A memo to Extinction rebels: on the need for truth-telling and its possible needful consequences
Telling the truth Extinction Rebellion’s (XR’s) first demand is for the Government to tell the whole truth about the gravity of the climate and ecological emergency. The time is now because everything is not going to magically sort itself out, everything is not going to be ok. What we are currently witnessing is climate spiralling out of our reach while ecosystems are already thoroughly degraded with the sixth extinction crisis under way. Climate disasters are coming, inevitably, and the climate situation will worsen for at least a generation, probably far longer, whatever we do. This is because of the time-lags built into the system: CO2 stays in the atmosphere for…
