They're doing it the wrong way.
They're doing it for the right reasons but they are doing it the wrong way.
I do think they are fighting for something that is worth fighting for
I don't think they way they are going about it is the right way.
This is the Outer Hebrides.
It's the place that I was born.
and a place that I love like no other.
However its also gonna be one of the place most and fastest affected by the climate breakdown in the UK.
So I guss tha's why I joined Extinction Rebellion
when I first joined Extinction rebellion I was brand new to activism.
But I got involved stright away, I was blocking bridges and I got arrested in Oxford Circus
However then I started to have some doubts. I didn't know enough to be sure in what we were doing.
So I took some time out and learnt as much as I could about non violent direct action.
In 1992 the united nations framework convention on climate change met in Rio de Janeiro
This was the first serious political attempt to prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate systems
All 30 countries there signed.
But it is 30 years later and CO2 levels have risen by 60%.
We are actually on course at the moment for 3 to 4 degrees of heating
From sea level rise to extreme weather events and mass species die off
human civilisation will be under extreme pressure
People around the world will loose their homes their work and even their lives
in some places this has already begun.
The dangers are so clear
so why is it that the response from governments around the world has been so inadequate?
Politicians are here today and gone tomorrow they're short-term thinkers
They're thinking about the tenure of their office and the upcoming election
the climate crisis is such a massive problem it's hard to know what to do as individuals
when our leaders aren't leading us.
so what action can we take ?
your platform and the activities being carried out in preparation for drilling for oil in the arctic ocean
represents a real and immediate threat to the environment both here and globally.
I was involved with a direct action against the first production oil rig in the arctic
and it's a russian rig Prirazlomnoye.
The issue with that rig and the russian oil industry in general
is it is a shocking disgrace of malfunction malpractice and incompetence.
They spill through land-based facilities the same amount per year that deep water horizon spilled
I'm Frank Hewetsen I have worked for greenpeace for 30 years
I work now in the greenpeace UK office as action coordinator
but ever since day one I've always been involved in actions.
We were under no real sort of misconceptions of... this could be quite a flagrant act of direct action
which the Putin government might not see very favorably.
We got tailed by a military Russian vessel
and as we came up to Prirazlomnoye they were quite close to us.
it made taking direct action quite difficult
what we'd done is we'd built a survival capsule into which we were going to put a team of three people
two women one man.
To get that capsule onto that oil rig was going to be really difficult
but now we've got a shadow with us
that we could tell were prepared to get directly involved and actually inhibit and stop us
made it almost unattainable.
I have to say I was a bit shocked that they actually got a gun out
five meters from an operating oil rig you know which has
all manner of different gases expulsions going on right you know
when they actually fired those guns when I saw it on the (video)
like i, you know, I just couldn't believe how reckless it was
It went pear-shaped very quickly after that
People in the water, freezing conditions they took control of the ship.
We were imprisoned down below it took us five days to be towed all the way back to MURMANSK
you know it was a success because you look now who's drilling in the arctic now?
Prirazlomnoye is right, Gazprom still are the Russians are hard nut to crack to say the least
look at shell they've pulled out you know none of the oil majors are there
seriously now contending that arctic oil it's a serious part of their portfolio
they have pulled out
many times throughout history big changes have come when people have taken a stand through direct action.
Direct action comes in many forms:
Sometimes it's economic
and sometimes it's physical
The climate and ecological emergency that we're in requires massive changes across the world.
Is it even possible to use these tools of direct action to get the changes we need?
From religions to revolutions, French and Russian revolution to abolitionists and civil rights movements
and the independence movements suffragettes...
none of these changes would have come about without people agitating for change
people getting out onto the street putting their bodies on the line
disrupting the status quo so the world we live in today
has very much been shaped by the actions of social movements and mass mobilizations.
luckily academics around the world have been figuring out
what types of direct action have succeeded in getting governmental change
It's almost a snowball effect to get people out onto the street because
then if you have enough people on on the street and disrupting the status quo
disrupting how business works as usual
then it gets into the news cycle it gets into the overton window so to speak the
opinion corridors and people start talking about the issues that are important
and the critical thing to do there is to try and build solidarity
within a whole range of people a whole group of people
but numbers alone can't be enough I attended the largest protest in british history when I was younger
but Tony Blair still went to war with Iraq the numbers and the scale of it didn't change anything.
If you are not disruptive you are easily co-opted or ignored
It is very easy to say, for the government for example in this country to say:
okay give us a hundred thousand signatures and then we will discuss something in parliament
"we will discuss it" doesn't mean we will take any action towards that request
it means we will just discuss it and it will probably go nowhere
it's important to just to be disruptive in order to bring greater attention to bear
on the particular subject that we're talking about that we're trying to seek change for.
if you're taking serious risky direct action
it's got to be done at the right time it's got to be leveled at the right people
it's got to have a certain amount of consequence because you're actually risking a lot
in this case we risked two months of imprisonment in pretty uh... pretty shit conditions
in the past I've struggled with the disruption
getting in the way of people's lives getting shouted at getting arrested
none of it is easy but that said disruption the definition of which is:
"To prevent something continuing to operate in its normal way"
does force the government's hand.
Disruption can be alienating but if it's done peacefully and with dignity, over time we will win people's respect.
governments generally have two choices:
They can allow them to happen peacefully and hope they go away
or they can what generally happens is that governments come down hard on the protesters
after a certain amount of time when they determine that there is some economic loss happening
you know and so on and so forth and they want to take back control of the situation
that brings about what we call a lose-lose situation
actual violence on the public will not be received well by the general public
and what happens in that instance is you often get more people joining the movement
feeling sorry for the protestors
and the government actually loses control
even though it's it seeks to gain control it ends up losing control
non-violence is when you respect everybody yourselves and the so-called enemy
they're not really enemies they're other human beings
and you have to be able to connect with them as human beings
so wherever you're working you respect those people
you don't respect the actions, maybe, that they're doing but you respect them
and you don't damage yourselves or them
you might damage property if that property is doing something evil like protecting a nuclear base
or something like that but you don't destroy or hurt people
so we know that these non-violent direct action tactics can work
but the climate and ecological emergency is a very particular type of crisis
what worked in the past won't necessarily work this time around
using non-violent direct action to bring attention to the climate and ecological emergency
has been uh extinction really kind of core purpose if you like
and we knew when we set it up that it would be a method by which to force a national conversation
on a very very pressing matter which at the time wasn't really getting too much attention
and we knew that we needed to shift the thing called the overton window
so like the lens through which you see the accepted kind of public conversation
and we wanted to shift that on two counts and the first one was on how serious the threat is
and at that time we still expected to be put up against climate deniers on the news for example
so we're really living in different times now, and the other thing was to try
and shift it on what seemed like an appropriate or like a proportional response
to the scale of the threat that humanity faces
so we really wanted to ramp up um the seriousness of the conversation
through people showing that they were willing to use their bodies, put their bodies on the line
and risk losing their sort of personal liberties
so where does that lead us successful forms of protest in the past
have been disruptive, non-violent, flexible and included mass participation
extinction rebellion aims to use those methods as well as encouraging:
creativity, clear messaging, learning and inclusive participation.
Working with movements and organizations from across the uk
we can force the government to make changes before it's too late
but do i think that Extinction Rebellion's direct action will be enough
to stop the climate and ecological emergency?
well the truth is I don't know.
But I do think that non-violent direct action stands a chance of getting us the changes that we need to see.
And with the alternative the world at three to four degrees of heating
that is definitely good enough for me.
Civil disobedience works really well when it's coupled with the terms mass participation
and that's been something XR's been set up to promote
so please do join us in rebellion out on the streets
if you want to learn more about non-violent direct action take a look in the description below for links.
Go on Extinction Rebellion's website and join a training