The Big One: mass mobilization comes to London!
As an 83 year-year-old living in the UK, I’ve seen many a campaign come and go but none has seemed as urgent, as all-encompassing, as that which is spreading across the world right now.
I’ve come to see that what we are fighting for is the future of humanity and that, unless we ACT NOW, Homo sapiens could follow the thousands of other species who, over millennia, have disappeared from Planet Earth. We, the human species, could become extinct. My children and grandchildren, your children and grandchildren, will not have a life.
I feel I need to say that again: unless we bring about urgent change NOW our children and grandchildren will not have a life.
How can we even begin to take that in? How can we get through the day with that thought in our minds
But, please don’t turn away because – wait for it! – good things are happening, people all over the world are waiting for you to join them in demanding change: species close to extinction are being brought back from the brink, fossil fuel companies are being challenged big time and indigenous peoples are reclaiming their lands.
People from all walks of life are beginning to think differently and to live differently and are working towards bringing about the changes we need.
“People have been taking to the streets to have their voices heard for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. Nothing new there. But, if it feels like there are more protests than usual, it’s because there are. In fact, they’ve tripled in less than 15 years. We are in a historic age of protest.”
Perhaps the biggest obstacle to bringing about the changes we need is that most of us can’t take in the sheer size of the problem and, if we do, despair in the face of the enormity of what we face is likely to stifle our ability to do anything about it…
So, if you are feeling confused and fearful, join the club.
“… standing up in protest is something we can all do to make our voices heard — and sometimes, even the smallest protests can make an extraordinary impact.”
This leads me to think about the achievement of the now-famous Greta Thunberg who raised climate change to become a worldwide talking point through what started out as a one-person protest. Initially on her own, her ‘Fridays for Future’ campaign, started in 2018, has spread among more than 14 million young people in more than 7,000 cities all over the world.
Pretty impressive for one person.
I could easily get bogged down looking at what the huge worldwide campaigns such as Stop the War, CND and Greenpeace have achieved, but, as we still live with the threat of nuclear war and potentially catastrophic environmental breakdown I, along with many others, have come round to thinking that if we are to change direction urgently – as scientists insist we must do – then something much more radical is called for.
Extinction Rebellion
But, what could little old me do to help my children and grandchildren to have a future? The answer came when a friend took me along to an early meeting of our local Extinction Rebellion group. They in no way resembled the ‘mob’ often depicted in mainstream media. No, they sat down talking about how they could join in the national protests as well as sharing ideas on what they could do locally to increase people’s understanding and to spread the word that ‘We need to be told the TRUTH, we need to ACT NOW and we must DECIDE TOGETHER’.
The group was – and continues to be – an inspiration: the retired teacher who has never before taken to the streets in protest but who now regularly takes the train into London to wave her banner and demand change; the retired Civil Servant who has been arrested more than once and has given a heart-felt speech in his defence in court; the young mother who told me she is determined to do all she can to protect her children’s future.
Perhaps the most important thing I took away from my first encounter with the extinction rebels is that they gave me HOPE. And, as I’m increasingly finding out, by working together we can bring about change.
Crucially, Extinction Rebellion is now reaching out to people from all walks of life to create a Movement of Movements as nature lovers, human rights groups, people in the north and in the south are coming to see that our problems have a common root and a common solution.
I hear that in response to the BBC’s ‘Wild Isles’ program about the beauty of the British landscape, the WWF, RSPB and National Trust have joined together to produce a program about the action needed to protect and restore nature in the UK. So it seems that working together with a common aim is already work in progress.
Movement of Movements
As I write, Extinction Rebellion’s Movement of Movements initiative for The Big One has persuaded more than 100 organizations to sign up with us.
It’s been easy to see the Movement of Movements as being made up of those keen to protect our woodlands, seas and wildlife but a chance encounter with the Palestine Solidarity Campaign has helped me to see things a little more clearly. Their website opens with the most uplifting, life-affirming statement with which we can all, I’m sure, identify: together we can take on the might of governments, corporations, and the media – and we can win. As Michael Mann made clear in his inspirational book about ‘Active Hope’
First, we start from where we are by taking in a clear view of reality, acknowledging what we see and how we feel.
So, viewing the world from my comfortable home in SE England, what do I see when I face the fear and look at the world close to home and far away? And, most importantly, what are the problems with which we must deal?
Environmental Breakdown and Global Heating
Human activity has changed Planet Earth so dramatically that year on year we are seeing ever more extreme weather events impacting severely on the lives of millions of people all over the world. Sheep farmers in Australia have been driven to suicide when drought destroyed their pasture-land.
“Joe Meggetto, a dairy farmer from Victoria’s Warragul South, says that at various points throughout his life he’s wandered his farm with persistent thoughts of suicide. He would sit in a paddock after milking and sob.”
There is much sobbing going on all over the world as crops fail and children go hungry.
Many of us in the UK are struggling to keep cool in record-breaking temperatures. In my heavily-congested corner of England, rarely a week passes without confrontation between those keen to maintain some semblance of an agreeable life and to protect the natural world and developers keen to clear ever more green space to build yet more houses and ever more roads for our burgeoning number of cars. Our neighbours in the natural world, birds, badgers and foxes find their territory continually under attack.
Christmas Day in 2022 saw a gathering of local people under a 100-year-old oak tree which was threatened to be cut down to make room for a road widening programme in front of a local school. In February many a tear was shed as the tree was chopped down following legal proceedings which threatened the protestors with hefty fines if they did not vacate the site.
Tears are being shed in many parts of the UK as the tree-chopping scenario is being played out, perhaps somewhere near to you?
Inequality
From the World Bank I learned that inequality has risen in recent years so that more than 700m people worldwide now live in extreme poverty.
In 2022, three multi-billionaires owned more wealth than the bottom half of American society – 160 million Americans.
At home in England Food Banks have sprung up as a cost of living crisis drives ever more people into poverty while in expensive areas houses are ever bigger, cars more luxurious and restaurants more expensive.
Biodiversity Loss
“Today, Earth’s staggering biodiversity is in a state of crisis. Species are disappearing faster than ever in human history. Globally, at least 1.2 million plant and animal species are estimated to be under threat of extinction, many of them before 2100.”
We are living through the 6th Mass Extinction of life on Earth.
But there is hope.
Nature has the potential to bounce back – sometimes it just needs a little help.
BBC Wildlife reports that the following species which have been saved from the brink of extinction: the Blue Iguana, Gould’s Mouse, the Northern Pool Frog, the American bison, the Chequered Skipper Butterfly, the Eurasian beaver, the Eastern Barred Bandicoot, the Echo parakeet, the Spixes macaw and more…
Why has it all gone so very wrong?
“You cannot control your own population by force, but it can be distracted by consumption”
Why, I’m left wondering, has this happened? How can I get some understanding of how we arrived at this place? How our intelligence and technical ability which has landed men on the moon, transplanted organs in the human body and has taken us to the highest peaks and deepest oceans are not able to stop a global pandemic or deal with potentially catastrophic climate change?
This is where my eyes were really opened and the picture became clearer…
Put simply: Neoliberalism, the free market capitalist system which began to spread worldwide during the last decades of the 20th Century, has at its heart the need for continual economic growth. But this, as it turns out, is destroying the natural world and isn’t too good for we humans or for the other species with whom we share the planet.
The success of the economy is measured by Gross Domestic Product but as late Robert Kennedy said ‘GDP measures everything but that which makes life worthwhile’.
A tree standing in a field does nothing for GDP, cut down and sold as timber, top marks for the economy. A visit to see grandma counts nothing for GDP, a shopping trip keeps the accountants happy. The list goes on…
As Naomi Klein put it in her book ‘This Changes Everything’ we take from and dump on the environment as a freebie.
To keep the economy buoyant advertisers and ‘celebs’ constantly bombard us with images of how we should look, how our homes should look and what top-notch cars we should drive. The Kardashian lifestyle is that to which we must aspire. We are constantly encouraged to buy, buy, buy.
I’m reminded of the story of Emperor’s new clothes where a young child explains to the crowd who had been brainwashed into believing that the Emperor’s clothes were wonderful, that, in fact he had no clothes on at all. To keep our economy afloat we’ve been led to believe that the ‘good life’ depends on excessive material consumption but, as the climate catastrophe clock gets ever closer to midnight, we need to shout from the rooftops that the ‘American Dream’ has turned into a nightmare.
“…what if it meant giving up things we’re well rid of, from deadly emissions to nagging feelings of doom and complicity in destruction? What if the austerity is how we live now — and the abundance could be what is to come?”
Yes, let’s shout that from the rooftops!
Let’s applaud those dedicated people who have worked so hard to save so many species and to protect our fast diminishing green spaces.
Let’s put aside fear and harness our Active Hope and work towards a future world where we humans will live in harmony with the natural environment and with the other species with whom we share our Planet Earth home…
And, let’s give the last word to Antonio Gramsci who, pondering why the population remained apathetic while jackbooted Fascists used torture and violence to take control in Italy in the 1930s and why the Russian revolution had been such a long time coming when millions of peasants were living in abject poverty while a small minority elite were living in luxury, said:
“What comes to pass does so not so much because a few people want it to happen, as because the mass of citizens abdicate their responsibility and let things be.”
Will I, will you, be part of the solution or will we remain part of the problem?
What will it take for me, for you, to join the Movement of Movements?
If you are based in the UK, I look forward to seeing you at THE BIG ONE starting in London on April 21st.
The author of this article is Eileen Peck, member of XR Wordsmiths, a collective of writers who are deeply concerned with the climate and ecological emergency facing us all; they are a part of Extinction Rebellion, and hail from all over the world.