Extinction Rebellion has finally discovered the best way to tackle the climate crisis

It took more than a year for the message to percolate, but Extinction Rebellion, or XR, has acted on the advice of an Editorial in The Independent. In August 2021, we suggested that the environmental protest group should compromise: “It should eschew demos that succeed only in persuading fair-minded people that environmentalists are a nuisance intent on making life worse for them.”

We pointed out that public opinion of XR was unfavourable, by a margin of two to one. Its protests had raised the group’s profile – three-quarters of British people have heard of it – which may have attracted recruits and donations, but it had failed to persuade people of the urgent need for dramatic lifestyle changes to avert climate disaster.

On New Year’s Day, XR announced that it agreed with us. Headlined, “We Quit”, the statement admitted that “very little has changed” since XR “burst on to the scene four years ago”. It said the organisation had decided “to temporarily shift away from public disruption as a primary tactic”.

While XR felt it had successfully used the power of disruption to “raise the alarm”, it needed “constantly evolving tactics” for the next stage, which is to “bring about a transition to a fair society that works together to end the fossil fuel era”. Rather than disrupting the public, XR said it now wants to “disrupt the abuse of power”.

This different approach seems to involve peaceful demonstrations and working with other groups to put pressure on politicians. Its statement said: “This year, we prioritise attendance over arrest and relationships over roadblocks, as we stand together and become impossible to ignore.” According to its website, this means “gathering at the Houses of Parliament day after day in large numbers” from 21 April.

In other words, politics rather than direct action. This is a welcome development. There is a place for direct action, especially to draw attention to wrongs that people know little about. But the climate crisis is not in that category. The problem is extremely well known. There are differences of opinion about what to do about it, and XR’s stunts failed to increase support for its preferred solutions. They advertised the sense of urgency felt by the activist core, but instead of persuading most people that “time has almost entirely run out to address the ecological crisis which is upon us”, they distracted people who were stuck in traffic or who couldn’t get on the Docklands Light Railway.

This is the latest iteration of the eternal question for radical movements: how far should they go in making life difficult for people in pursuit of a better society? XR has gone one way, recognising that it can achieve the change it wants in the UK only through democratic pressure, which means taking people with it; Just Stop Oil and Insulate Britain continue with their campaigns of making nuisances of themselves.

I think that the new XR approach is more likely to produce results, although it is confused by the unrealistic nature of its demands. It wants the UK to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions over the next 24 months – by the end of 2025. But it doesn’t seem to have a theory of how a daily demo in Parliament Square is going to achieve net zero in the rest of the world.

What is more, its main mechanism for achieving change in the UK is to set up a citizens’ assembly, and to require government to answer to it rather than to the existing citizens’ assembly, namely the House of Commons. Its citizens’ assembly would be chosen randomly from “ordinary people”; it is not clear why this would be more democratic than elections, or whether it would produce an assembly that was more committed to XR’s goals than the Commons is.

But as long as XR is debating such questions, rather than pouring fake blood over the Treasury’s steps, it would seem to be moving in the right direction.

There is a similar debate taking place in America. Gradual: The Case for Incremental Change in a Radical Age, by Greg Berman and Aubrey Fox, is due to be published in June. It argues that the calls for bold change on the US left – “Green Deal Now! Abolish ICE! Defund the police!” – are counterproductive. (ICE is Immigration and Customs Enforcement, rather than internal combustion engine, although I suppose it could be that too.)

The authors agree that the US government has failed to address climate change, among other things, but argue that the way to remedy this is through persuasion and democratic pressure. It is encouraging that XR now agrees with them.