The following is an excerpt from The Guardian‘s Editorial piece April 14, 2019 [https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/apr/14/the-guardian-view-on-extinction-rebellion-one-small-step]. I present it as a way to generate serious thinking about what looms ahead if we do nothing. At this time of the year when unusually high floods are once again threatening, a pause for critical thinking leading to changes in our behaviour is definitely called for.
The idea that we can change the whole basis of our planetary economy without pain and inconvenience for the global middle classes is simply false. The enormous political challenge is to ensure that the pain of adjustment towards a carbon-neutral economy is fairly distributed. At the moment the pain is concentrated on those least able to bear it. This is true between countries, in as much as it is sub-Saharan Africa where the destabilising effects of climate change are most visible and painful. It is also true within the rich countries which consume more than they sustainably can. In the west it is the poor who will be hit worst by rising prices for food and fuel. Yet a future of less consumption and less convenience is inevitable. We can choose to some extent how and when to face it, but it cannot be indefinitely postponed.
The purpose of climate activism is to make that choice consciously and deliberately, with planning and forethought, rather than have it forced upon us in a series of improvisations between catastrophes. The activists of Extinction Rebellion use the metaphor of war, and this is not entirely exaggerated. Although one of the purposes of groups like Extinction Rebellion is to avert wars over resources, this may – paradoxically – require the kind of social and political mobilisation only otherwise seen in wartime. The sense of a common purpose, and of suffering borne in common, which has so often and so fraudulently been invoked in the rhetoric of the political right since the financial crisis must now be appropriated and given real meaning.
Yet it is not enough for climate change to remain solely a cause of the left. This is a cause that must ultimately transcend left-right distinctions. To achieve such an escape from traditional politics will not be easy. It will be fiercely resisted, because there are many powerful forces that benefit, in the short term, from smugness and inaction. But the movement needs to isolate and expose them.
Hugh Williams
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