XR: Right Issue, Wrong Tactics

xr - melbourne

25-03-2024: During March, Extinction Rebellion (XR) protestors descended on Melbourne’s central business district and intentionally blocked traffic at some of the city’s busiest intersections. The actions were deliberately not coordinated with the authorities and the police, as part of their modus operandi of causing as much disruption as possible. XR call for immediate action on climate change and claim that the ecological destruction the planet is experiencing is now so far advanced that people (and governments) need to be confronted with the issues head-on, and effectively be forced to take it seriously. Many XR protestors are prepared to be arrested for their disruptive actions and claim that it is a small price to pay to bring attention to the climate collapse. On March 17, police arrested 32 people at the XR action who did not move on when asked, with 27 of them charged on summons with obstruction of a road, intentional obstruction of an emergency worker and hindering police.[1]

Climate breakdown

XR leader Violet Coco was prominent at the protests, despite being released on bail two days previously after being jailed for a blockade of the West Gate Bridge. That was Coco’s second stint behind bars after having been given an eight-month jail sentence (which was later overturned) for blocking the Sydney Harbour Bridge with a truck.[2] Coco said that XR’s civil disobedience methods are necessary to show people the danger they and their children were in due to climate breakdown. She stated: “It is not about arrogance. It’s about trying to sound the alarm.”[3] This was no doubt in response to those who decry the XR protests as a form of arrogance, for trying to take the moral high ground. One of XR’s demands was that the government should declare an ecological emergency. An XR protester exclaimed, “Why wasn’t there a revolution 30 years ago? Why isn’t there a revolution now?”. Some XR protestors wore keffiyehs to symbolise solidarity with Palestine in the wake of Israel’s war on Gaza, following the October 7 terrorist attacks by Hamas.[4]

XR are correct about one thing, and one thing only. Centuries of pollution since the first industrial revolution has cumulatively created the situation today where a collapsing climate represents an existential threat to human civilisation. The effect of greenhouse gases trapping heat in the atmosphere with its attendant dangers has been known for many decades, to say nothing of the raft of other critical environmental problems the planet faces. In 2023, 77 countries broke temperature records. 2023 was among Australia’s eight warmest years, with all eight coming after 2005.[5] Hundreds of sites across most of the Great Barrier Reef are turning white from heat stress as reported at the start of March, which means it was the fifth mass coral bleaching event in eight years.[6] Climate breakdown is a living reality in the Pacific Islands, with sea-level rises increasing the frequency of inundation by king tides, which exacerbates the salination of land and fresh water. The atoll states of Kiribati and Tuvalu may well become uninhabitable within the next 50 years.[7]

Bushfires are wreaking havoc across the world, and the 2019-20 summer bushfires in Australia razed 24 million hectares,[8] and have continued to ravage the nation each year since. If climate change fuelled bushfires are not enough of a concern, climate change fuelled floods step it up a notch. Sea temperatures above 26.5 degrees Celsius are required for a tropical cyclone to form. Sea temperatures in Australia are naturally warmer towards the north, heading towards the equator. The southern states, heading towards the South Pole, generally have much cooler sea temperatures. Yet readings in the first week of March outside Sydney, the capital of New South Wales, registered 26.75 degrees.[9] With the potential for a tropical cyclone in a region which has never seen one, you know we are in unchartered territory. It is not difficult to verify that the sheer volume of rain falling in cyclonic conditions is one outcome of warmer seas, which evaporate and then are dumped back on land as torrential rain. To top it off, monthly mean atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations reached a record high of 424.55 parts per million (ppm) in February 2024.[10] This compares to an estimated pre-industrial level of around 280 ppm. And carbon is only one of the main greenhouse gases, along with nitrous oxide, methane and water vapour.[11]

Counterproductive actions

The real and present danger of climate collapse is undeniable. Ultimately, it is caused by industrial development, which of course cannot be slowed or reversed without a regression to an earlier pre-capitalist age. The solution is to maintain and improve industry and technology, while converting to zero carbon energy sources. It will also be necessary to apply scientific and technological expertise to address the problem of removing or sequestering at least half the carbon already spewed into the atmosphere, which is currently emitted at the staggering rate of 35 billion tonnes per year.[12] This is all possible, but the current barrier is capitalism, the last form of class divided society. As capitalism is a system based on the unimaginable and obscene levels of wealth for a tiny minority, who live off the exploitation of the overwhelming majority of humanity, it cannot slow, let alone prevent, the exploitation of the natural environment. The exploitation of the earth and its atmosphere under capitalism, therefore, cannot be separated from the exploitation of the working class.

XR displays little or no awareness of this, perhaps because they reject the historical necessity for the working class to raise itself to power by establishing its own state and its own government. In short, they reject socialism, even if some of them have left-wing sympathies. They complain that the climate crisis is so severe that “there is no time” to build workers’ parties or a socialist movement. This process does indeed take time, yet the longer it is delayed, the greater the danger that society will not be able to prevent catastrophes such as the very one they say is the most urgent. The fact is that as much as XR try to deny it, the only possible and real ally of XR (and those who sincerely wish to take action to avoid climate collapse) is the working class itself.

Yet XR’s deliberately disruptive protests have had the effect of repelling millions of workers who would otherwise agree that urgent action on the climate is indeed necessary. One way to infuriate a worker on their way to work or trying to take a family member to a doctor, is to block the roads and/or public transport. This is so counterproductive it may even turn a worker who is sympathetic into a climate denier, i.e., producing exactly the opposite of what XR wish to achieve. Many workers understand the need for protests, demonstrations, strikes and even revolutions. But attempting to force anyone into your movement or your cause will of course create angst, bitterness and even mass conflict. One has to persuade and convince, and the best way to do this is to build a party which is determined to help lead the workers to power. One needs to inspire working people into action, not repel them.

The state

XR’s plaintive and desperate appeals to the state “to declare an ecological emergency” display their naïve understanding of a capitalist class divided society. A capitalist state ensures and protects the private property of the billionaires, while excluding the overwhelming majority from exercising political decision-making power. Pleading with it to “do something” only gives it more power to oppress the masses. Instead, XR should be appealing to the working masses themselves, ultimately to establish their own organs of state power. Yet if XR had class awareness and a commitment to the struggle for socialism, they would not be named XR. Even so, this does not discount the need for protests, demonstrations and movements demanding urgent action on the climate. This is of course necessary, and XR and other environmental activists can play a key role in such actions. However, the state and its government cannot be “shocked” into action. It cannot alter its nature by witnessing the misguided tactics of deliberately disruptive protests. The state has no conscience, it only has material interests.

In fact, protests which blockade the working class (deliberate traffic and thoroughfare blocking) instead of the capitalist corporations and their government and their state are obviously wrong-headed. Not only do they turn away those who might otherwise support and join you, they provide a pretext for the capitalist state to enact and enforce laws against protests themselves. XR’s reckless actions thus risk provoking the capitalist state into outlawing protest itself, whatever the cause. In doing so, it can even claim – with no small amount of justification – that it is protecting “the people” by doing so. XR’s “disruption” protests thus strengthen and reinforce the repressive function of the very state and governments responsible for the climate crisis, rather than delegitimise it in the eyes of the masses.

What is more, XR exploded onto the political scene in 2019 with its then novel actions, before disappearing from March 2020 when world imperialism launched a civil war against the masses under the guise of a fraudulent “Covid pandemic”. XR, along with almost the entire so-called left, automatically merged with the capitalist state in arguably its worst ever phase, and some of them are still loyal, wearing facemasks during their disruptive “protests”. Now that “Covid” has supposedly gone, XR are back, but they have patently not learnt from this experience. What is required is a climate movement that has no reformist illusions in the capitalist state, that seeks to involve and mobilise the working masses by seeking to convince (not force) them to take action. It should accomplish this by linking the danger of climate collapse to the danger of imperialist wars and to the skyrocketing cost of living crisis, which all stem from the same system. With the working class led by an authentic anti-capitalist party on your side, almost anything is possible.

Workers League

www.redfireonline.com

E: workersleague@protonmail.com

[1] www.thenewdaily.com.au/news/crime-news/2024/03/17/extinction-rebellion-melbourne-protest (20-03-2024)

[2] www.9news.com.au/national/extinction-rebellion-melbourne-hundreds-take-to-city-streets-for-climate-action/ddd7cbbf-9376-4558-8ef2-e664b45383ad (20-03-2024)

[3] www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/i-m-sacrificing-my-freedom-activist-vows-to-lead-cbd-protest-despite-bail-conditions-20240316-p5fcvn.html (20-03-2024)

[4] www.news.com.au/national/victoria/news/extinction-rebellion-protesters-shut-down-melbourne-cbd/news-story/2550ef0dc6e0ddfdd3a4f20f85b7b634 (20-03-2024)

[5] www.australiangeographic.com.au/news/2024/03/australias-2023-environment-scorecard-details-mixed-results/ (20-03-2024)

[6] www.sbs.com.au/news/article/mass-coral-bleaching-hits-great-barrier-reef-for-the-fifth-time-in-eight-years/yea3jxzlf (20-03-2024)

[7] www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/climate-change-pacific-what-australia-needs-do (20-03-2024)

[8] www.crikey.com.au/2024/01/09/black-summer-bushfires-changes/ (20-03-2024)

[9] www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/mar/13/australia-autumn-weather-sydney-sea-temperatures-cyclone-risk (20-03-2024)

[10] www.statista.com/statistics/1091999/atmospheric-concentration-of-co2-historic/ (20-03-2024)

[11] www.csiro.au/en/research/environmental-impacts/climate-change/Climate-change-QA/What-are-greenhouse-gases (20-03-2024)