19 October 2019 | New Scientist | 23M
Y LUNCHTIME runs in
London have been
joyfully car-free of late,
thanks to climate activists blocking
key streets. But that’s not why I’m
writing this defence of the protests,
which were banned this week.
The reason is that, along with
student climate strikes, the
Extinction Rebellion movement
has helped propel environmental
issues to be one of the top public
concerns. Meanwhile, the backlash
has drawn out its critics’ scientific
illiteracy and failure to grasp the
scale of the challenge posed by
climate change, laying bare why
the protests, not just in the UK,
but across Europe, Australia and
elsewhere, are necessary.
Extinction Rebellion triggered
a fair bit of criticism with its first
wave of protests earlier in the year.
But the latest response has been
far more hostile. “It is certainly
more voluminous and bile-filled
now,” says Leo Hickman of Carbon
Brief, which monitors UK media
coverage of climate change.
Prime minister Boris Johnson
set the tone when he spoke of
“importunate nose-ringed
climate change protesters” and
“uncooperative crusties”. The
Daily Telegraph branded the group
a “millenarian death cult”. The Sun
fumed: “Do they know our share
of global greenhouse gases is now
just 1.2 per cent?” The Daily Mail
even trotted out the old “global
warming is good for you” trope.
Perhaps the attacks are a sign
people have realised the protests
JOSIE FORDaren’t just a fun sideshow, but are
Comment
Adam Vaughan is New
Scientist’s chief reporter
@adamvaughan_ukViews
The columnist
Annalee Newitz
imagines nature
and tech merging p24Letters
To solve AI’s biggest
problem, try asking
an AI p26Aperture
Incredible images
from four days of
New Scientist Live p31Culture
A deep dive into the
facts behind epic
novel Moby-Dick p28Culture columnist
Jacob Aron on the
line between games
and gambling p30setting the agenda. Maybe that
is why Andrea Leadsom, the
minister responsible for energy
policy, has joined the criticisms
by saying people blocking roads
in London are protesting in “the
wrong country” because the UK
has cut emissions hugely since- That is utterly missing the
point. The point is the future.
The fact is global carbon
emissions are still rising, when
they need to fall. The UK is a small
emitter, but it has hefty per-capita
emissions. And it has a historical
debt, with responsibility for up to
3 per cent of all global warming.
Moreover, the UK government
admits it is set to miss carbon
targets from the mid-2020s.
That is because we have largely
done the easy stuff, swapping
coal power for wind power.
The next carbon cuts will
require behaviour and lifestyle
changes, as a report for the UK
government’s climate advisers
made clear last week. If the
political and media class claim to
be serious about climate change
but have a tantrum over traffic
disruption, imagine theirresponse when pressure comes
to bear on diet, flights and more.
Last week, New Scientist held
its annual festival of science in
east London not far from City
Airport, a hotspot of the climate
protests. One of our speakers was
Astronomer Royal Martin Rees. He
is a co-founder of the University of
Cambridge’s Centre for the Study
of Existential Risk, and one of the
most clear-headed thinkers on the
future of humanity there is. He
welcomed the presence of climate
change protesters on the streets,
and pointed out that if the UK
were to invest in export-ready
green-tech research, as it does
in the defence and biomedical
sectors, it could help cut global
emissions by far more than it
emits – and reap the rewards.
That is the scientifically and
economically literate response
to the climate change challenge.
For the record, I strongly disagree
with the view expressed by some
prominent Extinction Rebellion
members on the role the private
sector has to play in cutting
emissions. Some of the group’s
more extreme claims and
demands, such as net-zero
emissions in the UK by 2025, are
rightly facing scrutiny. But the new
wave of protest movements are
creating a political space for action
commensurate with the science.
That should be embraced, rather
than condemned. ❚Right to rebel
Climate protests are sparking a hefty backlash but, for all their faults,
they are what the world needs, says Adam Vaughan