GS@XR
Thank you.
I'm talking to you today in a personal capacity.
Not on behalf of Extinction Rebellion.
I'm in rebellion against the British government.
For its crimes against humanity!
For its refusal over the last thirty years
to take emergency action to reduce carbon emissions.
For facilitating the genocide of the next generation.
So I've got this feeling that at conferences like this
you have someone who stands up and does the talk about climate change.
It's been going on for 30 years now. It's something to tick off.
Something they have in the background.
Done that, move on.
I don't want to give that sort of talk.
what I want to do is to talk to you.
And I've got this idea, it would be a good idea to try and show that I'm human.
I'm actually an ordinary everyday sort of guy
in fact I'm a bit of a fuckup.
I haven't been very good at my relationships.
I've failed at businesses.
my mother my father they both died in the last five years.
I sat by the bed by then on their deathbed I knew does nothing I could do about it
I know that I'm going to die.
My body will turn to dust.
I'll be forgotten.
I get depressed and to be honest I don't know what to do about it.
and I suspect that many of you are a little bit like me, right?
Behind that sheen, behind the positivity you know you're a bit of a fuck up too.
maybe some of you think you're Gods.
Well I suspect you're not.
And there's this old idea, isn't there? That in order to connect with each other
we should confess.
So I'm going to make a little confession to you.
I've been a vegan for 34 years
but when I get a bit down I buy myself some milk chocolate.
I never said that to an audience before but there you have it
So let's do a little experiment. I want you to talk to the person next to you.
This is how it's going to go.
talk to the person
the first person that gets to speak, gets to speak and I want you to confess something.
the biggest thing you can think of that you're able to do.
It's only going to be 10 to 15 seconds.
The first person that gets to speak, gets to speak.
Turn to the person next to you and give that confession now.
Okay, that's timeout you've had time enough to give your confession
So what I want you to do please stop that's it timeout.
What I want you to do is to put your hand up if you made a big confession
Put your hand up if it was a big confession. Put your hand up if you made a big confession
So that's what about 1% of you.
Maybe some of you are shy so let's say it's 5% of you.
so I'm a social scientist I believe in normal distribution curves.
You're my outliers you're the 5% of people with courage
you're the 5% of people I'm going to be talking to primarily in my talk today
You're my people. You're the people that are going to make the change
You're the outliers.
okay so I think this session is about value right
so what I've got to say to you today is values don't mean shit!
what counts in the world today is courage.
The courage to put values into action
you can have values values values but unless you act they don't mean anything.
I do civil disobedience extinction rebellion does civil disobedience
The first time I did civil disobedience my legs was shaking
I was blocking a road
after I'd done it 15 times after I'd practice that muscle of courage
I took a book to read when I was sitting in the road
Nowadays when I go to court it's just another thing I have to do that day.
It's on the list.
A little while ago I painted the Grand Hall of Kings College
I caused 7,000 pounds worth of damage with other people
to get Kings College to divest from fossil fuels
it succeeded in five weeks but I was taken to court
when I went to court with my co-defendant we didn't have a lawyer
we spent 30 minutes thinking about what we were going to say
we stood up we said our truth
that we painted on the walls to stop shit from happening.
The jury agreed with us
and we were found not guilty.
That's courage
So courage is not not having fear.
Courage, as the saying goes, is deciding there's something more important than fear
and what's more important than fear
is this massive head fucked beyond the imagination threat we now have on the climate.
So I'm going to do a little experiment
I like doing experiments
In a minute I'm going to take my shirt off. Don't panic, it's not illegal
No one's going to get hurt.
But it requires a little bit of courage.
so let's do it
okay
the world didn't fall in God didn't strike me down.
maybe you're feeling a bit queasy maybe a bit amused
maybe you feel a bit irritated a bit pressured
this isn't quite what you came to the conference to see
a middle-aged man taking his shirt off on stage
but I suggest to you that that's what being radical is
It's doing something genuinely outside the box
okay so that's courage.
So I come today to tell you something pretty straightforward.
The world is fucked!
There's fires in Australia at this moment bigger than European countries.
A billion animals have been killed in the last month.
It's arrived after 30 years.
Carbon emissions have gone up 60%
they're still going up
we failed I failed you failed
those of you that run those big businesses you have failed big time
it's nothing to do with values, you've got values coming out of your ears
Values values values!
But no courage.
Those courage muscles have withered.
Maybe you feel a little bit affronted by that
Maybe you feel alittle bit defensive.
But with all due respect the 95 cent of you that are going to go away from this talk
and forget about it, apart from the bit about the shirt.
you people with all due respect are now historically irrelevant.
There's this idea of manifest destiny, are you familiar with this?
the Europeans went out they killed millions of Native Americans
they killed millions of Africans
manifest destiny
Europeans had the guns they had the spears.
Well the tables have turned
We have the courage you don't.
You had 30 years
Greta Thumberg, 17-year old, world famous, why?
Because she's got courage
Why have you invited me to his conference?
not because I'm a failed farmer not because I'm a manual worker
but because I've got courage.
Courage is not about winning
it's not about success
it's about failure and humiliation.
I recently did an interview with a German journalist
I wanted to communicate my love of prophetic Jewish culture
I wanted to make a suggestion that the German people had a historic opportunity
to say never again never again.
Never again to the killing the killing and the killing that led to the evil that we all know about
and here we are today planning the murder of billions of Africans
so that we can get on those flights 10 20 30 40 times a year
so we can continue to eat meat
so we can continue to ignore the plans of our governments to engage in this genocide or project.
Knowingly, willingly in the full knowledge of 30 years of objective science
in the next decade or two many of you are going to have to organize directly and indirectly
the killing of other people and other people are going to be organizing the killing of you
because this is what social breakdown actually means.
Climate change is not about polar bears.
The penny has dropped. what climate change means is economic collapse.
It means the loss of your businesses it means the loss of law and order
There's going to be desert in Italy and Spain the ice and the snow is going to melt in Switzerland
Those great German forests are going to burn down.
It's coming, the fascists are going to win the elections they're going to have us building walls.
they're going to send your children off to slaughter in war.
That's what's coming.
That's what the five percent of you know
You're the five percent who've been up at night
You're the five percent, the outliers, those with courage
that have been crying at night over it
along with millions of other people
You're like the UN diplomat who phoned up Extinction Rebellion and pleaded with us
to shut down the cop shut it down!
You're like the BBC journalist that rang us up to tell us
to shut down the British Parliament to close it down!
You're like the friend of Bill Gates whose house burnt down.
He had to jump in his car with his three year-old daughter and flee for his life
He phoned me up he said Roger...
Whatever it takes!
Whatever it takes.
So there's 5% of you here that know it's over, right?
It's over!
The skiing sessions
The cozy chats on the golf course, the quarterly reports ,the conferences
the talk talk talk about values
it's over
What I want you to do is to enter that despair, that self-contempt, that confusion
that feeling
of being lost
I want you to look into hell.
Why? because I'm a mobilisation specialist
that's what I researched
and in my opinion only when you look into the eyes of hell
are you going to be able to deal with that hell.
That's the guiding philosophy behind Extinction Rebellion.
200 thousand people have joined in a year 3,000 people have been arrested.
That takes courage!
The biggest civil disobedience event in British history, it transformed the conversation.
In 2019 the biggest influencer in the world on climate change was Extinction Rebellion.
Why? because we're not selling hope.
We're telling people the truth
and people are ready for that truth.
The 5% of you are ready
So at some point today, what I suggest you do is find a quiet corner and think about hell.
What it is for you? What it is for your family? Your company?
Your nation?
I'm not going to be doing questions we've had questions for 30 years, right?
This isn't about information anymore it's not about charts.
It's about emotions it's about actually doing what we have to do
So I'm going to do a workshop at 10:15 I'm a bit of a rebel so I just said I want to do it.
They've given me the space, it's not on the program.
The 5% of you that want to actually engage in what has to be done, can come along.
Because we all know what has to be done.
The 2,000 of you today you could all make those phone calls
you could take two weeks off work you could go down into the center of Zurich
and you could go on hunger strike.
That's what would change Swiss policy on climate change, right?
It's not like we don't know how to do it. We lake the courage.
so in this workshop I'll tell you the scientific construction of mass civil disobedience.
I'm not gonna say it successful
but what I am going to say is that it may give you self-respect.
So that when you're on your deathbed you can say to yourself:
"I did what I knew I could have done".
"What I knew I could have done" if I had the courage.
I suggest that maybe that's the only thing we can ask of this life, right?
so the adventurers amongst you I invite you to the main act at 10:15 in the bar.
Thank you very much.