You either love what they're doing or you hate them — Extinction Rebellion is not shying away from polarising the public. They have been shutting down city streets, creating chaos, and getting themselves arrested — all to highlight the climate emergency. In the last few weeks we've seen a huge ramp up in the group, and with that comes more opinions on their actions.
Adrian Schrinner, Lord Mayor of Brisbane, where there have been a number of demonstrations to shut down city streets, has said they should be ashamed of themselves. Brisbane's Courier Mail has published stories calling them 'ferals', 'ratbags', and 'unemployed thugs'.
When it comes to climate change, where the stakes are so incredibly high, is it wise for climate change activists to be getting people offside?
Extinction Rebellion (XR) is focused specifically on civil disobedience (also known as civil resistance). This is non-violent but illegal protest, and XR is far from the first to incorporate it into rebellions. Civil disobedience was a large part of the US civil rights movement, including the sit-ins and peaceful protests, and there has been a long and varied history of the practice in Australia.
Civil disobedience traditionally has been used to highlight unjust laws by breaking them — think an African American sitting in a whites-only restaurant. XR isn't breaking unjust laws — instead it is trying to get more and more people involved in protests to create both economic and civil disruption. But does it work?
Political scientist Erica Chenoweth says yes. After studying hundreds of rebellions between 1900 and 2006, she found that not only are non-violent campaigns effective, those that engage such strategies are twice as likely to achieve their goals than violent ones. She also found that depending on a number of factors, it can take only around 3.5 per cent of the population participating in this protest to create political change.
Policy researcher Oscar Berglund points out that the comparison may not be as relevant as it first appears, given that the research was based on toppling dictatorships rather than on democratic issues. Also it's worth noting that in Australia, 3.5 per cent of the population still means nearly 900,000 people — so Extinction Rebellion is falling well short.
"Joining or supporting a group like Extinction Rebellion can help ease the overwhelming dread of climate change."
Nonetheless, XR is one of the biggest environmental movements we've seen in Australia in a number of years, and the