to dislike Extinction Rebellion

[Azeema]

I live in farming village. We are getting in harvest.
But today on village green extinction rebellion has decided to have a party with drums, loud music and a megaphone. Green is right opposite care home for elderly.
I asked them, who are you protesting? There are no corporations here. Everyone is aware of environment as we grow your food.
They have been very rude, refusing to turn down noise despite disabled residents with migraines suffering.
They made me very upset talking about how England could grow own food and have lower footprint if not so many people (I’m an immigrant) looking at me like I should leave country.

They pissed off a whole lot of boat owners recently by going on their boats without permission overnight and running flags up the masts.

Sailing boats. Nice environmentally friendly things on the whole.

What a lot of surburban protestors against cars seem to forget is that some of us depend on a car to earn a living and pay the shed load of taxes to keep society going. People in rural communities don't have access to public transport because there isn't any and isn't going to be any.

I'm all,for protecting the environment, but scaring individuals like they do is irresponsible. Target the corporations and fucking China and America. Those of us having to earn a living, see friends and family by car have other things to worry about.

It's a movement, not a membership organisation, and as such will have a mixture of arses, great people, informed people, people willing to learn, utter ignoramuses, energetic people who want to see a better world, frightened people who are looking to DO something before it's too late, stupid people who think protesting is a bit of a lark, and lots and lots of people who are a mixture of all the above.

OP, I am really sorry that the people in your village are being racist dicks to you. There's no doubt other racist dicks in Extinction Rebellion, too, just as there is in every movement on the planet. There's also a lot of good people who would decry that sort of behaviour.

Do I have misgivings about Extinction Rebellion? Absolutely. But on the whole I think the movement is a good thing. It's making people and gvernments take action, and its giving people hope.

JustAvoidReally...i think you are thinking of communism not socialism.
In my opinion Capitalism is a very inefficient way of providing food ( supermarkets actually ruining food so homeless people can't scavenge for it) and rainforests being cut down to provide land for catyle... it's a disgusting system.

supermarkets actually ruining food so homeless people can't scavenge for it

That's not supermarket's fault. They would get sued if anyone got sick by any chance afaik.

I think a lot of people in this thread are spectacularly missing the point. The purpose of Extinction Rebellion is not to get people on side or to be well liked. The aim is to sound the alarm on climate change. An analogy I have heard is that getting annoyed with the protests is like getting annoyed with your smoke alarm for making a loud noise, rather than taking action to put out the cause of the fire.

In a nutshell, yes the protests are irritating. They are meant to be.

As ArcheryAnnie just said, Extinction Rebellion is a very dispersed and diverse collection of people. You will find some twats with massive egos involved. Protesting can attract that type. However, they are very few and far between. The vast majority are ordinary people who cannot just sit by and watch the approaching train crash anymore.

I saw a banner at a 'Mothers Rise Up' climate change event that said something like "If you think we're annoying, wait till you see Nature's protest"

That pretty much sums it up for me.

Its winter soon. The nights will be drawing in and the weather getting colder. Extinction Rebellion supporters will withdraw to the bars and coffee shops to discuss their next summer of fun. Peace will reign for a while. Just a few more weeks to go.

In a nutshell, yes the protests are irritating. They are meant to be

Irritating is fine. Endangering my livelihood is not.

Why are they not risking their jobs and passing the risk onto other people?

Neither is doctors and nurses not getting to work or cancer patients not getting their treatment 'irritating'.

Absolutely, Leigh.

The problem is our society has grown too comfortable with the idea that we, either as rich parents or through the state, pay wankers to spend all day coming up with problems to fill their time with, then inflicting them on the rest of us

Very well said. Climate change, like charity, has become an industry, and the money/vested interests sloshing around means they're hardly going to depart from the hymn sheet so lavishly prepared. Add in being the fashionable cause of the moment and the chance to chuck around a bit of unearned power and you've got all the ingredients for a true "emperors new clothes" situation

Luckily, as Tolomeo said, they'll soon all be inside for the winter. It's not so much fun holding street protests and yoga events when it's cold, though if this really is the "emergency" they all claim I wouldn't have thought they'd mind … after all, aren't we always told the discomfort they cause is nothing compared to what awaits us?

Extinction Rebellion is a very dispersed and diverse collection of people. You will find some twats with massive egos involved. Protesting can attract that type. However, they are very few and far between

Really? I don't pretend to know the situation elsewhere, but the one I attended with a young friend contained almost nothing else. Loudest of all was the self-styled "professional anarchist" whose every comment received applause and who was most insistent that attendance at her latest "event" was compulsory … no excuses accepted, the crisis was too imminent for backsliding

I had to smile on finding out later that she didn't even attend herself - allegedly because she had an "emergency meeting" with some MP, but actually because her new TV was being delivered

All Extinction Rebbellers I know live on inherited wealth. Funny that.

There are more ecological alternatives to capitalism...like socialism for example

I imagine a lot more people would take an interest in ecological issues if all the proposed solutions didn’t mysteriously mirror all the stuff the far left has wanted to do for decades but could never win a democratic mandate to carry out...

Whilst XR blocked the M32 in Bristol, the effect of the car fumes in such a congested area didn't seem to concern them. Just so long as they enjoyed showing off their pretty pink bath.

TBH with you it has its base in Hackney, I sincerely doubt they are thinking any immigrants should go home, Hackney is wonderfully diverse area of many cultures.

@IAskTooManyQuestions

Seriously - you doubt the experience of the op because the Hq is in Hackney? Allow OP her actual feelings. Hilarious. Multiculturalism doesn’t stop at the M25.

Your fun weekend is pretty irrelevant compared to what they are fighting for
so what about the people in ambulances when they glue themselves to the road? they aint having a fun weekend but had it made worse by these idiots

They don’t aim their protests at individuals
bull shit, farms are generally family run, they have broken into and tried tosteal from many. Once you start break and enter with a side of theft, you lose any right to tell me how to live.
There have been plenty of reports of kids on farms worried about being attacked by these idiots outside their farm
There have been reports of country cafes closing as they are sick of the abuse from this lot
but no they like totes dont target the little guy or individuals...........

I'm really sad that some pp's cant see the very obvious racism that OP experienced today.

I'm not a huge fan of extinction rebellion for all the reasons already stated.

On a side note....eco veganism.

This is my area of study but it's been a few years....

The most effective healthy and sustainable diet is 100% unprocessed and aprox 90% vegan.

It's 90% for various reasons from our teeth which are designed for a bit meat and a lot of veg consumption to vegan diet cannot naturally give us the b12 we need therefore we would need to supplement it. Supplements are manufacturing and create packaging waste to boot.

Alternatively we can eat herd animals shit as it's often full of b12....not sure if eating animal pop is technically vegan...either way i dont want to eat shit.

The 100% unprocessed bit is obvious - processed foods use a lot of energy and have many miles on the clock. Therefore i am driven mad by the new vegan convenience foods filling the shelfs...yes its better than non vegan equivalents and that may be true but it's not something to be all sanctimonious about! It's processed!

Also from a health perspective i'm sceptical, our bodies can be a bit picky over b12 and some people may think they are sorted on fortified foods when they arent.

Next on my soapbox....organic veg

It's bloody expensive but research shows good organic veg and fruit (as in grown in the great outdoors) often have higher levels of vitamins so in theory you may need to eat less portions or smaller to get the same about of goodness.

While the pesticides in the EU are safe for us it can disrupt the sensitive balance of soil. I still think the costs of buying organic are inaccessible but it's important to note that when soil is disrupted we can lose out on micro minerals.

Micro minerals such as lithium is non essential but it is beneficial we just don't know by how much yet. So if you can afford one organic product make it a root vegetable. Preferably potatoes as we eat them a lot, often grown in the UK which is less miles and more affordable, it supports soil diversity and your getting a good dose of micro minerals.

Thank you OP for starting this thread so I could get in my soapbox!

The purpose of Extinction Rebellion is not to get people on side or to be well liked

put simply, i and many like me wont listen to people shouting or screaming.
I dont take life advice from those i dont like or trust

"'m really sad that some pp's cant see the very obvious racism that OP experienced today"

Im sad that she couldnt see it either. Except when it was her who was affected .

I am very much in the periphery of my local XR group. As I understand it, XR want to target corporations and organisations through use of non-violent direct action, and not target individuals - in fact their stance is very much that they will not judge individuals for their choices. Having said that, my own experience and that of friends in XR groups in other parts of the country is that while most of the people involved are very reasonable, there is definitely a very vocal minority who are critical of others when it comes to particular issues - veganism and having children seem to be the two main bones of contention. My local group seem pretty good about pointing out that these issues are not something XR is commenting on, but others maybe are not.

I think some criticisms of XR are valid, but the groups are frequently doing things off their own bat, so to speak, so there are bound to be groups that carry out actions that maybe don't fit entirely within XR's spirit.

IMHO, X-R is today’s manifestation of the classic doomsday cult. Climate change occurs in multiple over-lapping cycles. What we have now is simply part of a 30 million yr smaller cycle within a 150 million year larger cycle, and of course another theorised one related to galactic rotation. For most of Earths life, we have not had polar ice caps and we have had more CO2 than this. We have had multiple mass exctinctions come and go. The Earth oscillates between an icehouse and greenhouse state. We are in an icehouse part of the cycle. Even if we burn all the fossil fuels left, it is not enough CO2 to more than brush the climate into the greenhouse state (which is due to occur naturally in the next 60 million years anyway). Sea levels rising, erosion...it is all part and parcel of our changing face the Earth has never been static with the continents where and as they are much less islands. Even thousand year old nautical maps from the ancients show different coast lines.
So yes climate change exists. Yes, the climate is changing.myes humans are having a minimal temporary affect on it. But it’s not a crisis where we have only 18months to swan around to rich people descending in private jets to pontificate at us.
XRs website on “the Truth” is full of propaganda dressed as scientific fact (when they are not facts). A hilarious one is the claim that 50% of the planets topsoil is gone and there is no more land anywhere on the planet to add even one more farm. Anyone who has driven cross country of any continent has eyes to know that is not true not to mention actual scientific reports available online.

As for racism, yes they are a white, middle class movement. Protest is a form of exerting power over others. I believe the OP experienced the racism she experienced. The criticism about her opinion on the effigy burning of grenfell as not being racist is baffling to me. Especially how HelenaDove seems to think a bonfire effigy of grenfell did not affect the OP when the OPs demographic were the #1 victims of the actual Grenfell tragedy. Who is she to tell that demographic what they must find offensive?

@squeekums so you’re just going to ignore the fact there is a climate crisis because you don’t like a group? Really?

The world is still going to shit whether or not you stick your fingers in your ears and pretend it’s not happening.

@DoomsdayCult can you back up any of your claims with some actual sources please?

mustardscreams I don't think many people on this thread are denying there is a climate crisis. Just that ER/XR aren't "sounding the alarm" in a way that works for them. Surely the point of an alarm is that people take notice and begin to take action (though not individuals... Just the big, nasty corporations and governments ). If people sigh internally, and continue fighting climate change in their own way, I don't think that's sticking fingers in their ears.

doomsday I think the issue is that all these earlier changes happened when people weren't around. Now we are, we'd quite like to keep it that way for a few more millenia. Ideally with the rest of our current ecosystems intact and without descending into some kind of mad max dystopia to survive. It's a very anthropocentric movement in that regard. Kind of understandably.