Extinction and Rebellion
By: Harriet Bergman
Tags: Martin Luther King, Direct Action, Extinction Rebellion, Civil Disobedience, Climate Change

Extinction and Rebellion

“Imagine living under a calculated, meticulous system dedicated to and dependent on your oppression and being surrounded by that system’s hysterical, brainwashed guardians”,

writes Mary Annaïse Heglar. It sounds like the capitalist system we now find ourselves in: climate change threathening all life on earth, politicians actively facilitating destruction, everyone unwillingly or willingly strenghtening the ‘carbon lock- in’ we find ourselves in, the future unsure. But it is not a description of today, it is a description of living under slavery as a black person. The climate crisis is an existential crisis, endangering all life on earth. But so was slavery. To prevent this from being a story where I quote inspiring people of color to conclude that fighting for civil rights and abolishing slavery has resulted in a just society with equal rights, unicorns and rainbows, Heglar also writes, “let’s be clear that slavery didn’t end with freedom; it just morphed into a marginally more sophisticated, still deadly machine”.

Either way: the crisis we’re facing is not the first existential crisis.

Nor are the means to fight it new, nor are the arguments against these menas original. I will try to start formulating some of my thoughts about existential threats, the means to combat extinction, and the moderates denying action iis required.

A collective fight to heal ourselves and the planet

Picture from https://popularresistance.org/the-global-extinction-rebellion-begins/

Yesterday, I had the pleasure to hear a presentation of the people of Extinction Rebellion Belgium. Extinction Rebellion is a great organisation. They organize accessible civil disobedience protests to demand government action to battle climate change. They are giving many despairing, angry, scared, hopeful, courageous, dangerously committed people the chance to take an active role in a story about destruction. People who do not care about being on the right side of history — does history really matters if there are no historians left in hundred years? People who care about doing what is right. People who feel that taking a stance, doing something, for the first time gives purpose again in a life that feels purposeless. For what is a purpose on a dying planet? What does studying, finding a job, tindering for love, means but a quick fix? Coming together and protesting an unreliable government means for the first time you are not alone in your despair, anger and fear.

I’m extremely grateful for any organization that brings people together to show that together we can make a difference. Maybe we can create art that makes people recognize the far-fetched attempts destuctive companies make to buy social licence, like Fossil Free Culture is doing. Maybe we can show our solidarity with groups directly affected by the Fossil Fuels Industry’s shameless disregard for human life, like Code Rood did with their action in Groningen. Maybe we can influence the direction our overly-lobbied political system is heading towards, like Extinction Rebellion does. Maybe we can stop CO2 emissions for a day, like the people participating in Ende Gelande protests do so often. Maybe we can feel part of nature again, part of a growing movement against ecocidal coal plant builders, defending the oldest forest in Europe at the Hambach Forst… Coming together is one of the first steps in combatting the despair and the overwhelming fear experienced when it hits you that, in the end, it might not be allright. That politicians do not have our best interests at heart. That destructive industries will not be convinced with science if it costs them profit. That it is up to us.

We need courage

Have you ever dreamt of being a superhero? Have you ever longed to be at the right place, at the right time? Have you ever doubted whether your life had a purpose? Everybody who is alive now is born at the exact right moment in history to show courage and resilience. And courage and resilience are required.

Climate scientist Kate Marvel writes: “Courage is the resolve to do well without the assurance of a happy ending”. And whether our story will end well is an open question. Feedback loops, like the release of methane from the Siberian permafrost, and the melted ice no longer reflecting the sunlight back but instead absorbing the heat in the oceans, can trigger reactions much faster than conservative calculations. The IPPC raport is a few years behind the latest observations, giving the most reliable information that has gone through months and years of checking, rather than the newest findings. Save is better than sorry when it concerns scientific data, but not when it concerns humankind, biodiversity, the pacific islanders already dying.

Like many people have argued before, optimism and hope can be used as devices to not get into action. At the same time, there is a form of hope, the undecidability of the future, that can inspire people to act.

This is not the first time we fight

At the very beginning of the Extinction Rebellion movement, there were reasonable concerns about the narrative of ‘extinction’, not only because in the past there have also been existential threats, but because people with less environmental privilege are already — or no longer — experiencing extinction. Right now, the movement — as far as I can see — has a narrative that is less euro-centric. The past shows that there is a lot to learn from people who are not me, who are not the predominantly white NGO’s— from people of color who know about movement building, story telling, and about nurturing hope and resilience.

Ursula K. Le Guin wrote: “We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings.” Walida Imarisha and adrienne maree brown write:

“We are the dreams of enslaved Black folks, who were told it was “unrealistic” to imagine a day when they were not called property. Those Black people refused to confine their dreams to realism, and instead they dreamed us up. Then they bent reality, reshaped the world, to create us.”

The seemingly impossible has been done. It has been difficult. It has been ridiculous to even start. It required many, many sacrifices. It required lives. It required courage and resilience, kind words, continuous care, careful deliberation, an acceptance of failure, endless meetings, hugs, tears, and powerful speeches to lift people back up. It required doing the unthinkable, defying reason to demand what was impossible.

“You don’t fight something like that because you think you will win. You fight it because you have to. Because surrendering dooms so much more than yourself, but everything that comes after you.” Mary Annaïse Heglar

Forced to confront the issue

Martin Luther King wrote this letter from his Birmingham jail:

“Why direct action, why sit-ins, marches, and so forth? Isn’t negotiation a better path?” You are exactly right in your call for negotiation. Indeed, this is the purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and establish such creative tension that a community that has consistently refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored”

This is what Extinction Rebellion is also doing: creating disruption in such a way that the issue can no longer be ignored. You can disagree with their methods of civil disobedience —(although I’ve argued that it’s form of climate change denial to accept the fact that ecocide is happening but not accept that we should do as much as is in our power to stop it) — but that is something about which Martin Luther King also had something to say:

“I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens Councillor or the Ku Klux Klanner but the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says, “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can’t agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically feels that he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by the myth of time; and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.”

In coming together, finding each other, and taking a stance, we can find a lot of power, resilience, courage, and even, I think, hope. This is not the first crisis that has been faced. If we act, it might not be the last.