I am hugely impressed with the bravery and commitment of Extinction Rebellion to force governments to commit to prioritise dealing with the Climate Crisis.
They’ve done it. They’ve woken people up across the globe, but I think they should stop marching now and move on, and use the next level of safer more powerful tactics from afar.
Marches, petitions, t-shirts, peaceful protests are all great, they make you feel wonderful, but they are a bubble, they have no teeth. They give you the illusion of having achieved something for a cause – but you will achieve nothing unless you take one further step – because they are appealing to the better nature of people who in many cases do not have one.
We have to modernise our tactics.
The only thing that changes politicians’ behaviour (because that is what we are talking about) is something that threatens their ability to get elected.
Historically, traditional peaceful protest movements have failed. Look at the Peace movement and the Environmental movement.
Given the amount of time they have been going, in some cases 50 yrs (CND), the millions of people that have participated, and the man and woman hours that have been spent – they have achieved extraordinarily little.
We’ve still got nuclear weapons and nuclear power, we invaded Iraq and the planet is dying.
We have to contact our MPs and elected representatives; it’s easy to block emails so it is better to write a letter.
Politicians regard each letter they receive as representing the views of 1000 people – as so few people write.
Hand address it.
Tell them we won’t vote for them next time unless they represent our views and you’ll be watching how they vote; commit to a Green New Deal.
The Green New Deal has to be a cross-party government priority and long term commitment to a lower CO2 economy with a view to devolving completely out of fossil fuels, and committing to huge investment across the board into the Clean Renewable Energy sector in all its manifestations, regardless of what party is in power. This not only cuts emissions but creates a huge amount of jobs.
Britain has the best renewable energy potential in Europe with a 17,000 mile coastline. It has huge offshore wind potential, deep marine currents running at the equivalent force of 200 mile p/h winds, massive tides, as well as solar, methane, even some geo-thermal.
It should be kicked off by reinstating a new “Feed-In Tariff” supported by all parties, price index-linked for 30 years. Privately/domestically generated electricity can be sold to the grid immediately. This is how the Germans are doing it.
Banning fracking immediately because fracked oil and gas are fossil fuel.
We need to introduce legislation and grants for all transport to be converted to hydrogen – the climate game changer. It can even be used for shipping and aviation.
It’s easy to convert existing combustion engines to it immediately, e.g cars. It’s cheap to make locally, using renewably sourced electricity, and when you burn it, all it gives off is water vapour.
Replace Britain’s ageing infrastructure with a new high speed super grid. We could be selling clean energy to other countries.
We need a modern approach to dealing with our waste recycling. We are in the dark ages.
Start writing to your MPs.
Katharine Hamnett