The Grapevine

ENVIRONMENTAL NEWS AND UPDATES COMPILED BY JO IMMIG

- Jo Immig

REBELS WITH A CAUSE

You may have heard about Extinction Rebellion (ER) or seen its members protesting in the news in recent times. They’ve been credited with bringing about the United Kingdom Parliament’s climate emergency declaration. But exactly who are they and what are they demanding?

Extinction Rebellion started in the UK in 2018 when 100 academics came together to protest against climate breakdown, biodiversity loss and the risk of human extinction and ecosystem collapse.

They started performing acts of nonviolent direct action in London, which culminated in the occupation of four prominent sites in central London earlier in 2019. Thousands were arrested.

In the spirit of Occupy and Gandhi’s independence movement, ER is an apolitical grassroots movement spawning groups across the globe, including in Australia. The goal is to rally worldwide support around a common sense of urgency to tackle climate breakdown and ecological collapse.

“We are facing an unprecedented global emergency,” reads the manifesto on its website. “Life on Earth is in crisis. Scientists agree we have entered a period of abrupt climate breakdown and we are in the midst of mass extinction of our own making”.

To address the crisis, ER is calling on governments to tell the truth to people by declaring a climate and ecological emergency and working with other institutions to communicate the urgency for change.