Conversations With Extinction Rebellion
Walking in towards the Houses of Parliament from the Embankment, I became aware of the first signs of stereotypical environmental activists milling around, shuffling in and out of the underground station and milling around drinking coffee from their disposable cups. They didn't need the stickers and flags bearing their now well known hour-glass symbol, their multicoloured, scruffy appearance may as well be a uniform - and a warning to others. As I carried on towards Downing Street the sound of generic drumming became louder and the occupation of London by these crusties, as they have been dubbed, became all the more apparent.
All the expected paraphernalia; the banners, the flags, the interpretative dance - it was all present, as were the Socialist Worker vendors and opportunistic political hacks. Left-wing protests always seem to look the same regardless of whatever the particular grievance might be that day.
Walking through the narrowed pavement flanked by protesters on either side were London's commuters, most of them steeley eyed - clearly trying their best to ignore the pandemonium going on around them. As I fumble about in my camera bag to begin taking photos a man, perhaps in his mid-forties and dressed in normal attire for once, sticks out a leaflet for me to take. I had promised myself I wouldn't cause a scene, but I couldn't resist spark up a conversation.
"What is it exactly that you're trying to achieve with these protests" I ask.
"What is it exactly that you're trying to achieve with these protests" I ask.
"We're trying to raise awareness of the fact that we only have ten years to drastically cut greenhouse gases or we risk going over the tipping point" he says in deadpan fashion.
At this early point in the conversation a large group of protesters began making their way down the main road towards Trafalgar Square, their banners read "Christian Climate Action". I'm reminded of how fears surrounding (seemingly) apocalyptic circumstances fueled the rise of that particular Jewish death cult in the first place all those years ago, with disease rife in the major Roman cities playing a significant role in converting the desperate masses. I pondered how ecology might lead to a rise in intolerant religious fanaticism in the future - crop failure and exotic diseases making their way north into current temperate zones as the climate changes would certainly acerbate a sense of impending apocalypse.
The conversation that followed was a difficult one for me. Whilst I agreed with this campaigner on the problems we face, there remained a level of naivety that I just couldn't forgive in a man of this gentleman's years.
"Who is actually behind Extinction Rebellion" I asked, "who is financing it?" He didn't know, but was quite sure that it is all done through grass-roots with no outside help from quangos, corporations or rich lobbyists.
I pushed these sorts of questions as far as I could without scaring them away, as this individual was clearly someone who doesn't see the direction of travel our global society is heading.
"All I'm saying" I said, as carefully as possible, "is that we need to be careful that in supporting groups such as Extinction Rebellion, we aren't actually just making people poorer and paying more money to the corporations that caused this mess in the first place. The worry is that a lot of what you're in favour of is precisely what the UN's Sustainability and Development calls for."
I got a blank stare in response. He hadn't read it, but it does have many parallels to the Green New Deal he mentioned multiple times throughout our relatively short conversation. He also spoke in favour of new, strict global regulations, perhaps run by the UN he says, despite the fact that corporations or their ex-CEOs run all of the divisions that the UN operates. Apparently green activists today are suggesting we hand over unprecedented levels of power to a small group of people who have created the world's problems in the first place, in order to fix the problems that they created whilst impoverishing the poorest people on the planet. It doesn't sound particularly radical or even common sense to me, but there we are...
Another big issue in the conversation was technology. "We already have the technology" he kept assuring me, except as I pointed out, these are not always solutions, and in most cases are a way of prolonging the inevitable. After all, replacing fossil fuels with technology that requires rare earth metals would create an incredibly short-term solution. Not only that but the energy that has to be invested in the mining, processing and recycling of these rare elements not only requires a lot of energy investment to start with, but contaminates the earth with toxic residues for hundreds of thousands of years. Not entirely a green solution.
"But we need to also cut down on waste and consumption too, its not just about replacing the technology" he says. I agreed with him, and lamented the fact that everybody today is so materialistic.
I eventually lead the conversation somewhere no green activist wants it to be taken;
"Why doesn't anyone ever bring up overpopulation", I ask. "Nobody ever brings it up, but house building and the additional infrastructure like roads and railways that is needed is destroying the last remaining wild spaces in this country" I said. I bring up the fact that since the early 1990s immigration, either directly or though second or third generation births, has been responsible for over half of the population growth in the United Kingdom.
"We have plenty of space, only two percent of the land is housing in the UK" he tries to reassure me.
Needless to say, I wasn't particularly reassured and it took a lot of effort to prevent myself from smashing my hand through my face in exasperation. Instead I calmly pointed out that we currently import nearly sixty percent of our food from abroad, roads are over crowded and adding to carbon emissions as a result and the people who have come to live in the UK for a better life from less affluent areas in the world are now living Western lifestyles which green activists all agree, are the biggest contributors to climate change.
"I never thought of that", he says rather sheepishly before giving the stock response that "we need immigrants" because of our ageing population.
"But you just said you want to change everything about the way our society works" I say getting a little agitated. "People should be looking after their own elderly parents and we could easily train enough care staff, it just requires a culture change and a return to more old fashioned community values."
Bizarrely he agreed with me, which took me by surprise. The conversation then went onto politics after he gradually began to see that I was certainly not of a left-wing persuasion.
"I just don't see the Right as having any of the answers, all the solutions are coming from the left" he says rather defensively, before describing himself as a socialist - like I needed it spelt out. I had to bite my tongue but I wanted to respond with "I'm a socialist too, just not one you'd agree with", but opted for something a little more tactful.
"I don't think the idea of left or right even makes sense anymore, things need to change and we need a fairer society, but a lot of the problems today were caused by the atomisation of people caused by the love revolution and the break down of traditional family values, and the disruption caused by immigration and the like that has been exploited by politicians like Thatcher and Blair to feed the economy..."
I'm not sure what he thought of me or the points I raised after that, but we shook hands and I felt like it was honestly the first grown up conversation I've ever had with with a typical leftoid, so kudos to him for that. It was a truly refreshing encounter.
Continuing on with my walk towards Trafalgar square I then came across a man and a woman wearing "I'm A Scientist, Ask Me Anything" t-shirts. I couldn't help myself and posited a question to them on ecology; "what benefit is there to forcing the world to go vegan if agriculture still requires agrichems. Would it not be more ecologically friendly to go back to pre-industrial methods of farming that uses crop rotation and mixed farming?" I asked. I'm paraphrasing here, I wasn't quite that eloquent.
From these scientists came the rather predictable response that methane produced by cattle is dangerous and that veganism is best, but vegetarianism with dairy is still much better than our current dietary habits. I asked how you intend on milking cows without having veal as an obvious byproduct but they kind of ignored that point.
"We don't need manure for farming anymore" one scientist said, explaining that if we recycled all food waste we could not only mulch it and return it to the field as compost but also burn the resulting methane for power production. Admittedly this is not a terrible idea in theory, but it would require a massive infrastructure network to transport all of this food waste and compost around to where it needs to be. It seems once again that Extinction Rebellion are proponents of high-tech solutions, which isn't particularly surprising given that it looks by all accounts to be a movement that gets the foot in the door, so to speak, for the "fourth industrial revolutionists", the harbingers of a new age of corporate spying and crypto-taxation.
"Each family", I explained, "needs about three acres of land to feed themselves for a year using permaculture or traditional farming methods. It wouldn't be easy, but if we could get as many people to return to the countryside and live simple agrarian lifestyles, rather than cramming everybody into cities, that would alleviate many of the problems" I suggested.
"We can't have organic farming methods anymore", she replied, "we have an increasingly urban population that traditional farming methods couldn't produce for..."
Well that's kind of the point though, isn't it?
Cramming the surplus population into cities is part of the UN's agenda. It makes people reliant upon a centralised authority for their welfare. It makes people weaker, an individual in a sea of faces possessing neither an identity or a purpose, which is what any organisation solidifying power wants.
"Who is actually behind Extinction Rebellion" I asked, "who is financing it?" He didn't know, but was quite sure that it is all done through grass-roots with no outside help from quangos, corporations or rich lobbyists.
I pushed these sorts of questions as far as I could without scaring them away, as this individual was clearly someone who doesn't see the direction of travel our global society is heading.
"All I'm saying" I said, as carefully as possible, "is that we need to be careful that in supporting groups such as Extinction Rebellion, we aren't actually just making people poorer and paying more money to the corporations that caused this mess in the first place. The worry is that a lot of what you're in favour of is precisely what the UN's Sustainability and Development calls for."
I got a blank stare in response. He hadn't read it, but it does have many parallels to the Green New Deal he mentioned multiple times throughout our relatively short conversation. He also spoke in favour of new, strict global regulations, perhaps run by the UN he says, despite the fact that corporations or their ex-CEOs run all of the divisions that the UN operates. Apparently green activists today are suggesting we hand over unprecedented levels of power to a small group of people who have created the world's problems in the first place, in order to fix the problems that they created whilst impoverishing the poorest people on the planet. It doesn't sound particularly radical or even common sense to me, but there we are...Another big issue in the conversation was technology. "We already have the technology" he kept assuring me, except as I pointed out, these are not always solutions, and in most cases are a way of prolonging the inevitable. After all, replacing fossil fuels with technology that requires rare earth metals would create an incredibly short-term solution. Not only that but the energy that has to be invested in the mining, processing and recycling of these rare elements not only requires a lot of energy investment to start with, but contaminates the earth with toxic residues for hundreds of thousands of years. Not entirely a green solution.
"But we need to also cut down on waste and consumption too, its not just about replacing the technology" he says. I agreed with him, and lamented the fact that everybody today is so materialistic.
I eventually lead the conversation somewhere no green activist wants it to be taken;
"Why doesn't anyone ever bring up overpopulation", I ask. "Nobody ever brings it up, but house building and the additional infrastructure like roads and railways that is needed is destroying the last remaining wild spaces in this country" I said. I bring up the fact that since the early 1990s immigration, either directly or though second or third generation births, has been responsible for over half of the population growth in the United Kingdom.
"We have plenty of space, only two percent of the land is housing in the UK" he tries to reassure me.
Needless to say, I wasn't particularly reassured and it took a lot of effort to prevent myself from smashing my hand through my face in exasperation. Instead I calmly pointed out that we currently import nearly sixty percent of our food from abroad, roads are over crowded and adding to carbon emissions as a result and the people who have come to live in the UK for a better life from less affluent areas in the world are now living Western lifestyles which green activists all agree, are the biggest contributors to climate change.
"I never thought of that", he says rather sheepishly before giving the stock response that "we need immigrants" because of our ageing population.
"But you just said you want to change everything about the way our society works" I say getting a little agitated. "People should be looking after their own elderly parents and we could easily train enough care staff, it just requires a culture change and a return to more old fashioned community values."
Bizarrely he agreed with me, which took me by surprise. The conversation then went onto politics after he gradually began to see that I was certainly not of a left-wing persuasion.
"I just don't see the Right as having any of the answers, all the solutions are coming from the left" he says rather defensively, before describing himself as a socialist - like I needed it spelt out. I had to bite my tongue but I wanted to respond with "I'm a socialist too, just not one you'd agree with", but opted for something a little more tactful.
"I don't think the idea of left or right even makes sense anymore, things need to change and we need a fairer society, but a lot of the problems today were caused by the atomisation of people caused by the love revolution and the break down of traditional family values, and the disruption caused by immigration and the like that has been exploited by politicians like Thatcher and Blair to feed the economy..."
I'm not sure what he thought of me or the points I raised after that, but we shook hands and I felt like it was honestly the first grown up conversation I've ever had with with a typical leftoid, so kudos to him for that. It was a truly refreshing encounter.
Continuing on with my walk towards Trafalgar square I then came across a man and a woman wearing "I'm A Scientist, Ask Me Anything" t-shirts. I couldn't help myself and posited a question to them on ecology; "what benefit is there to forcing the world to go vegan if agriculture still requires agrichems. Would it not be more ecologically friendly to go back to pre-industrial methods of farming that uses crop rotation and mixed farming?" I asked. I'm paraphrasing here, I wasn't quite that eloquent.
From these scientists came the rather predictable response that methane produced by cattle is dangerous and that veganism is best, but vegetarianism with dairy is still much better than our current dietary habits. I asked how you intend on milking cows without having veal as an obvious byproduct but they kind of ignored that point.
"We don't need manure for farming anymore" one scientist said, explaining that if we recycled all food waste we could not only mulch it and return it to the field as compost but also burn the resulting methane for power production. Admittedly this is not a terrible idea in theory, but it would require a massive infrastructure network to transport all of this food waste and compost around to where it needs to be. It seems once again that Extinction Rebellion are proponents of high-tech solutions, which isn't particularly surprising given that it looks by all accounts to be a movement that gets the foot in the door, so to speak, for the "fourth industrial revolutionists", the harbingers of a new age of corporate spying and crypto-taxation.
"Each family", I explained, "needs about three acres of land to feed themselves for a year using permaculture or traditional farming methods. It wouldn't be easy, but if we could get as many people to return to the countryside and live simple agrarian lifestyles, rather than cramming everybody into cities, that would alleviate many of the problems" I suggested.
"We can't have organic farming methods anymore", she replied, "we have an increasingly urban population that traditional farming methods couldn't produce for..."
Well that's kind of the point though, isn't it?
Cramming the surplus population into cities is part of the UN's agenda. It makes people reliant upon a centralised authority for their welfare. It makes people weaker, an individual in a sea of faces possessing neither an identity or a purpose, which is what any organisation solidifying power wants.
Predictably questions like who is really behind Extinction Rebellion are rarely asked by their rank and file, and particularly in the case of younger people its easy to understand why. These youths are excited and happy to be apart of something that appears at face value at least, to be trying to save the world, and the camaraderie that is seldom found in the modern world that is found in these groups gives them a sense of purpose. I am hard pressed to find any ill will towards the younger lot who get sucked into these movements.
But as I've shown here on this post, its not just the young who end up getting sucked into these organisations though, and from walking around the event yesterday it is clear that a considerable amount of seasoned activists have been called out of their metaphorical retirement, and have found something to clutch on to and seem relevant again. It is this old guard that is a bit of a concern to me, because whilst many of the over forty-somethings are just as naive as the kids, the organisers (who claim to be 'grass roots') appear to be professional, radical shit-stirrers. The ins and outs of who is who is best left for now, but generally the same people who were behind the Occupy Movement in the late-noughties, appear to be pushing this apocalyptic brand of environmentalism that we've been experiencing of late.
Greta Thunberg is the best example of this naiveity, look below the surface we'd find all sorts of dodgy clues - the most obvious being the recent stunt she took part in sailing to America on a yacht that was once named the Edmond James de Rothschild, the influential French Zionist banker - and her crew were sponsored not only by a Swiss financial consultancy firm but also, ironically, car manufacturer BMW! I'm sure there are a plethora of other dubious connections we could bring to light, and many prominent figures are already beginning to do that so I won't get bogged down on that today, but it is worth just being mindful that things aren't always what they seem, and my concern is that all these protests will simply provide the artificial public support for policies that will impoverish millions of people, and most likely you and I too!
As an added insult, Extinction Rebellion is calling for a "people's assembly" because in their view Governments aren't doing enough to fight climate change. They argue that a form of direct democracy when it comes to the environment, would be the best way to push nation states into action, but who exactly are going to make up these "people's assemblies"?
I presume there will be very, very few people who would vote to ban their own car, their own central heating, and half their dietary intake - so who exactly are they saying should be dictating to the rest of us? Probably the very same people who, like I've hinted at already, messed the planet up to start with.
But as I've shown here on this post, its not just the young who end up getting sucked into these organisations though, and from walking around the event yesterday it is clear that a considerable amount of seasoned activists have been called out of their metaphorical retirement, and have found something to clutch on to and seem relevant again. It is this old guard that is a bit of a concern to me, because whilst many of the over forty-somethings are just as naive as the kids, the organisers (who claim to be 'grass roots') appear to be professional, radical shit-stirrers. The ins and outs of who is who is best left for now, but generally the same people who were behind the Occupy Movement in the late-noughties, appear to be pushing this apocalyptic brand of environmentalism that we've been experiencing of late.Greta Thunberg is the best example of this naiveity, look below the surface we'd find all sorts of dodgy clues - the most obvious being the recent stunt she took part in sailing to America on a yacht that was once named the Edmond James de Rothschild, the influential French Zionist banker - and her crew were sponsored not only by a Swiss financial consultancy firm but also, ironically, car manufacturer BMW! I'm sure there are a plethora of other dubious connections we could bring to light, and many prominent figures are already beginning to do that so I won't get bogged down on that today, but it is worth just being mindful that things aren't always what they seem, and my concern is that all these protests will simply provide the artificial public support for policies that will impoverish millions of people, and most likely you and I too!
As an added insult, Extinction Rebellion is calling for a "people's assembly" because in their view Governments aren't doing enough to fight climate change. They argue that a form of direct democracy when it comes to the environment, would be the best way to push nation states into action, but who exactly are going to make up these "people's assemblies"?
I presume there will be very, very few people who would vote to ban their own car, their own central heating, and half their dietary intake - so who exactly are they saying should be dictating to the rest of us? Probably the very same people who, like I've hinted at already, messed the planet up to start with.
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