TRIGGERnometry - Who Are Extinction Rebellion and What Do They Want? - Roger Hallam

Episode Date: March 24, 2021

Co-founder of Extinction Rebellion, Roger Hallam joins us. Join our exclusive TRIGGERnometry community on Locals! https://triggernometry.locals.com/  OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: Paypal: https://bit.ly/2Tnz8yq https://www.subscribestar.com/triggernometry https://www.patreon.com/triggerpod Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Buy Merch Here: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/ ADVERTISE on TRIGGERnometry: [e-mail] Join the Mailing List: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/sign-up/ Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media:  https://twitter.com/triggerpod https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod About TRIGGERnometry:  Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kitten. And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people. A terrific guest today is a co-founder of Extinction Rebellion. Roger Hallam, welcome to Trigonometry. Hi, thanks very much for having me on. No, thank you for coming on. We really appreciate it, just as we were discussing before we started the show. It's great to hear from people on all sides of the various discussions that we have in our society. before we get into the nitty gritty, tell everybody who are you, how are you where you are? What has been the journey that leads you to sitting here talking to us?

Well, I've always been interested in politics and the environment. I got involved in organising people when I was about 14, 15, 10. I've been in this game, as you might say, for a long time. In my 20s, I was very much involved in community development work with housing cooperatives and work with co-operatives. And then I was an organic farmer in Wales for 20 years. I still technically am. And during that time, I became increasingly aware of the climate crisis, not least because it was affecting my business and the business of other farmers.

And that led me to do research on mobilisation and civil disobedience at King's College in London, where I'm still at doing PXD research. And through that research, I helped to design and do strategic work for extinction rebellion, which is, as you can imagine, taken over my life somewhat since it exploded into the world in 2019. And look, as we talked about, again, before the interview, neither Francis or I are climate scientists or, frankly, scientists of any kind. Aren't we? I'm pretty sure you're not.

Not, mate. But what we did want to is to pose questions to you that a lot of ordinary people might have, people who are very interested in this issue, people who are very concerned, and equally people who are somewhat skeptical. So tell us, first of all, why Extinction Rebellion exists, and I know that you don't speak on behalf of it. You're just one of the people involved in it. But why was it founded? And what is the climate crisis, as you put it? Yes, well, as you say, I'm just coming on on this as an individual in Extinction Rebellion. I do a lot of the spokesworks, as it were, for the organisation. But in this video today, I'm just speaking for myself.

Lots of people may agree with me or may not, but I just want to make that clear. As far as Extinction Rebellion is concerned, I think it came about because a critical mass of people, people at the same time started to realize that the climate crisis was not just another issue out there, that it was fundamentally a threat to all our values and the very basis of our society. And that realization wasn't rooted in a particular ideology or a particular politics, but in what you might call the geophysics, that the weather systems around the world are being destroyed, because carbon is being put into the atmosphere. And that's a straightforward fact of science, as you might say.

And inso much as that's happening, then that's going to threaten all our values and all we believe in. And I think we came along at a time when many people were thinking, well, why isn't anything happening? You know, people have been talking about this for 30 years. The idea was the politicians and the diplomats were going to sort this out. It had numerous conferences. And the horrifying statistic, I suppose, is that since 1990, when scientists around the world officially said, if we don't sort this out, we're heading for catastrophe, carbon emissions have increased globally by 60%. So there's been an, you know, undeniable abject failure.

by the powers that be, to sort out something that in principle everyone wants sorting out. And it also coincided with, I don't know if you remember this, it was an IPCCC report. This is the main organisation in the United Nations that tells the world what the state of play is on the climate. And in October 2018, coincidentally, they came out with this mind-blowing report, which said, we have 10 to 12 years to reduce carbon emissions by 50% in order to have a 50% chance of remaining under 1.5 degrees, which sounds all very technical, but what I'm here to try and communicate, I suppose, and what I think a lot of people don't understand is 1.5 degrees is the threshold of catastrophe. And I can speak a bit more about what that concretely means.

And that's really what has created this massive movement around the world, along with Fridays for a future and, you know, numerous sort of mobilisations. What I want to try and emphasise here is, and this is what I want to talk about if it's okay with you, is this idea that. that the climate crisis traditionally has been very much a fringe issue. It's been, you know, what the diplomatic elites talk about. It's what left-wing people talk about it for once of a better word. And what Extinction Rebellion was trying to do, in my view, was to bring it into the mainstream consciousness of ordinary people as something that is important for everyone.

And that's why we have this slogan of beyond politics. It's not that we don't, we're not political. I mean, I'm broadly left wing, as you can imagine, and what have you. But that's not why I'm involved in Extinction Rebellion. And the reason why lots of people are involved in Extinction Rebellion isn't because of tribal politics. It's because of a realization that if we don't come together, we're in danger of betraying the next generation to an unbelievable amount.

of suffering. And Roger, you've used words up, you've betraying the next generation, climate catastrophe, all of this. What does that actually mean? Good question. One of the biggest problems with climate change or the climate crisis or whatever you want to call it is these phrases have been around for a long time. And psychologically, what happens is if you associate something with a phrase like climate change, it tends to stick. So because climate change has been talked about, you know, in the 1990s, in the early 2000s, at that period, quite rightly, climate change was seen as an issue, an environmental concern, something that was being sorted out, we need to gradually reduce carbon emissions,

there's, you know, there's some serious implications maybe if it doesn't happen. But what's happened in terms of the science and the real world, as you might say, is that over the last 20 years, and particularly in the last 10 years, the scientists have discovered or reiterated that if it's not sorted out, it becomes exponentially more scary to the point of being terrifying. Because what we're fundamentally talking about here is the basis of all life on Earth. and I've been trying to think of an analogy, so maybe this isn't a good one, but here we are, I'll try it out on you. So if you think of society,

you can think of a society like as a dinner table, and there's, you know, there's knives and forks, there's plates, there's food on the table. So that's like society, you know, there's politics, there's culture,

there's people's personal lives. They're all laid out on the table, and that's what you might call society. And what the climate is, the climate isn't another dish. You know, it's not the peas on the table. It's the table itself. In other words, if you cut off a leg of the table, you know, it starts to wobble.

If you cut off the two legs of the table, the whole thing shatters on the floor. And this is the fundamental point of why the climate crisis has to be at the forefront of our minds. Because if we lose those two, you know, legs of the table, then that's it. it's gone. So what I need to tell you for about a few minutes is exactly why that is the case, why we are in the process of losing the two legs of the table, as you might say. So the first thing to say is if you're going to describe the climate crisis, you really need to talk about numbers. You know, there's no point in me saying, well, it's really serious. People say it's really serious all the time, but we need to know precisely why it's serious.

And a good analogy here is when you go to the doctor, you know, you have a lump in your chest or something, you go to the doctor. You don't want the doctor to say, well, it looks like you might have cancer. What you want the doctor to say is to get the x-ray out and point to, you know, your lungs or whatever, and say, look, they're 45%, you know, diseased. And in 10 years time, they're going to be 75% and then you're going to die. That's the level of responsibility the doctor has is to actually. give you the probability analysis and the numbers. So anyone who comes on your show and wants to talk about the climate has a responsibility in my view to actually give the numbers. And one of the things about the climate crisis is people think it's very complicated. But as it's become more of an

emergency, it's actually become reasonably straightforward. And the reason for that is we're basically talking about scientific processes. And the most basic scientific process is when it's warm, ice melts, which is not that complicated. So then the question is, where is it melting? How fast is it melting? And what does that mean? So the hard science is that the Arctic is melting because it's warm.

No one's disputing that. It's two, three degrees higher than it used to be. So that means it's disappearing. And over the last 30, 40 years, it's disappeared by 70% in terms of its volume. So this means, you don't need to be a genius to work this out, but at a certain point, and the most recent scientific papers predict, it will be totally melted in the summer in around 2030, 2035. Now, what I need to emphasize here is the figures I'm going to give you are accurate,

but they're not absolute, right? In other words, it's likely, just as when the doctor says you've got six months to live, it could be four months and it could be eight months, but you're not going to be around in two years. You can see what to mean. So it's the same, like the ice could be melted. It's definitely going to melt and it's going to be around 2030, maybe 2030. Now, why this should be terrifying about the body is because when the ice has gone, then the weather systems around the world, which are already semi-cautic because of the climate crisis, are going to become even more chaotic. And that means two precise things.

What it means is that it's going to be a lot hotter. And when I say a lot hotter, as a farmer, I can tell you that it being generally hotter doesn't. matter. What matters is what you call the long tail. In other words, the really hot days. You know, if it's two degrees hotter, who cares? Well, what the two degrees hotter means is it's going to be 10, 15 degrees hotter, maybe two or three weeks of the year. Now, if you're growing a crop and it's over 20 degrees more than it should be for two or three weeks of the year, then you're going to lose the crop. So it doesn't. So it doesn't. doesn't matter that most of the year it's, you know, it's a little bit warmer than it was yesterday.

That's not the issue. It's like what happens at the extreme. So that's the first problem. And the second problem is that once the ice is substantially melted in the Arctic, the temperature difference between the Arctic and the equator lessened because it's warmer in the Arctic. And that difference between the temperatures drives the wind patterns around the Northern Hemisphere. So in other words, everyone knows that weather in Britain is a bit useless in the sense that, you know, it's raining and then it's sunny and then it's raining. Well, what's been happening over the last few years is what's called winter blocking, which means that it rains, it rains, and then it doesn't rain at all. And the reason for this is that the weather systems are slowing down. Now, again, if you're a farmer, it doesn't matter that it rains and then it's sunny, that's what you want.

What's disastrous for food production is when it rains the seven weeks. So like 12 years ago, 12, 15 years ago, in 2006, I think it was, it rained every day in Wales for seven weeks, and I lost 15 acres of vegetables. Now, I can tell you, it doesn't matter how good a farmer you are. If it rains every day for seven weeks, you're going to lose your crops. There's nothing you can do about it. While two years ago, it didn't rain in Wales effectively for 12 weeks. And then I lost all my crops because it was so dry.

So hundreds of millions of farmers at this moment in time, are literally panicking because they don't know what the weather is going to be like. And the upshot of this is there's going to be a food crisis. There's already been substantial food crisis over the last 10 years. And these crises are going to get exponentially more serious insomuch as we let the temperature go over 1.5 degrees, 2 degrees. And what that means to be blunt is millions of people start, to death in areas of the world where they don't have, you know, advanced social support systems.

And what that means is mass migration. And what that means is the end of the global, you know, the global world order, as you might say. Now, we can argue about whether it's inevitable or how inevitable it is. I don't think that's the main point here. I think the main point for an intelligent conversation is, do we want to go there? do we want to play Russian roulette with our children's lives? And what's the morality of that? And just to finish off on this,

what, I mean, I can give you a few more facts and figures join the conversation. But I think the fundamental point here is that we're in danger. In fact, we're in the middle of betraying all human values if we betray our children. Because whether you're on the right or the left, everyone agrees the most shitty thing you can do is send your children into an ecological help.

No one wants to do that. So what we need to do of the societies to have an intelligent conversation about what that responsibility means and what we need to do in order to minimize the probability of this horrendous thing happening. Well, before we get into the responsible conversation,

let's have a little bit more of the irresponsible conversation, just from the angle of the sort of skepticism that people do have. And I'm just talking about ordinary people who like us, aren't scientists or whatever. Do you watch problematic content online? Of course they do. They watch trigonometry. Many ISPs log your internet activity and sell that data on to other big tech companies or other advertising companies. I know. That is why I use ExpressVPN to hide my browsing activities. I bet you do. ExpressVPN is a simple app which you can have on both your computer and your smartphone. which hides your traffic into one channel

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and thoughtfully crafted with real materials to deliver lasting comfort and support. Go to avocado greenmatress.com slash trigger to check out their mattress and furniture sale. That's avocado green mattress.com slash trigger. Avocado green mattress.com slash trigger. I mean, and the reason I bring this up is I remember when I was at school in the 90s and the early naughties. When I left school, the official consensus was that by I think 2020 would run out of oil. very soon after we'd run out of coal.

Pluto was still considered a planet. So this idea that science is this great predictor of things to come often fails to take into account technological progress. We now extract oil that wasn't accessible to us before, the same with coal, and on and on we go. So how reliable are these predictions, is I guess, what I'm getting at? Because isn't it possible that some Elon Musk-like character

will come along and just come up with some solution of either allowing you to grow crops in a different climate or allowing you to cool the temperature or allowing you to capture carbon or whatever else it might be. Isn't this prediction based on current knowledge which is never accurate? Well, as I said, prediction by definition is never absolute, right? So that's the first thing to say.

And the second thing to say is when you're dealing with a horrendous risk, you have to engage with the proportionally principle. You know, that's how we need to frame the debate. We don't want to frame the debate that because we can't prove it, then, you know, it doesn't matter. So a good analogy here is, is would you put your children onto an aeroplane

if there was a 5% chance of it crushing? Well, not unless you're a psychopath. Or you don't like them. But you wouldn't put your children onto a plane if there was a possibility of, you know, a 20% chance, but we don't really know, but it could be a 1% chance. You still wouldn't risk it. Roger, but hold on.

This is a bit of an unfair argument in my view because at least my understanding of Extinction Rebelly and other people who talk about the climate is you're asking for very, very drastic changes to people's ways of life. You're asking people to massively reduce their consumption. You're asking for societies to be restructured. all of that sort of stuff, right? So it's not a choice between putting your kids on a plane

and not putting them on the plane. It's a choice between putting them on one plane, which has a 1% chance of killing them, or putting on this other plane, which has a 100% chance of ruining their life. That's how something you might say it. Let me give you three clear scientific situations, right? Number one, at the moment, we're at 1.3 degrees above pre-industrial temperatures, the hottest or the double-hotest this year, 2016. And temperatures have gone up on average by 0.3 degrees of a centigrade between 2010 and 2020. Between 2000 and 2010, it was 0.2. So there's a broad exponential increase, broadly speaking, okay? So if you do the simple maths on this, we're at 1.3 at the moment in 2020. We need to add on 0.3 to get 1.3 to get what we're predicted to be at by 2030. So 1.3 plus point three is 1.6.

Now what we've been told for the last five years is there's a Paris agreement and we're going to keep the temperatures at 1.5. So the first thing to establish is we're already effectively locked in 1.5 degrees and many scientists, and I talk to many of the top scientists in the world, are adamant that we're heading over 2 degrees. So that's the first data point, right? The second data point is what does this actually mean?

What it means is that it's going to be increasingly difficult to live in the tropical areas of the world. So one scientific paper has said that at two degrees centigrade, a thousand million people are going to be forced to move. A thousand million people at two degrees centigrade. In other words, like many of the areas, Africa, in the Central America, in India are going to run out of water, they're going to have extreme weather events, and we're going to have massive migration.

Now what we know is that migration, without talking about the politics of it, but we know sociologically migration is a massively disruptive event, both for the people that are migrating obviously and also for the countries that receive that migration. I think we received, what, five million people, something like that in Europe from Syria. Now, the reason that Syrian civil war happened, arguably was because there was a massive drought, which was related to climate change. So that was a little canary in the coal mine, as you might say. So that gives you a taste of what's coming down the line if you start moving towards two degrees centigrade.

And another data point is what's happening in Greenland. So it's an established factor. No one disputes this. So if the Greenland ice cap melts, it will increase sea levels by seven meters. That's seven meters on average, right? And everyone agrees that if the sea levels rise above two to three meters, you'll have to evacuate all the coastal cities of the world, short of those that are rich enough to build great big walls. In other words, that is a catastrophe on lots of different levels, humanly, economically, socially.

And this is the situation, is there scientific papers come out this year that say we are already locked in the melting of the green and ice sheet. So what's been happening over the last 10, 20 years is we've handed over to future generations a massive increase in sea level rise. And this will only get worse because there's a lot of dispute around whether it's locked in on West Antarctica. That's another five metres of sea level rise. This gives a taste, you know, I mean, I could talk for half an hour. But what I'm trying to communicate is on multiple levels, we're reaching the point of no return.

I mean, reaching the point of a non-linear catastrophe. So, Roger, that being the case, why is it that governments around the world haven't done more? If this is the case, if we really are on the edge of a complete total climactic catastrophe? Well, there's a number of different ideas on this. What I want to establish is the science is not political. What I've just said is not political. You know, it's the geophysics, it's the biology.

And I just want to add in, if you don't mind, I forgot. Yeah. The Amazon, right? Let's just throw in the Amazon, and then we're done. The Amazon has been reduced in size by 17%, right, over the last 30 years. So it's 17% less than it used to be. Now, what the scientists are saying is if you cut down more of the Amazon between 20 and 25%, then the ecology of the Amazon goes into a natural dieback.

In other words, the Amazon exists because of the rainfall, and the rainfall exists because the Amazon evaporates water. Now, if you remove those, if you remove a certain proportion of the Amazon, that feedback mechanism doesn't work anymore. And the whole thing dies of its own accord, in the same way as what's happening in the Arctic with the temperature. And if you lose the Amazon, if you lose, it all turns to desert and savannah, then you've got a massive amount of carbon that isn't being taken out of the atmosphere. So it's a bit like kicking a ball down a hill.

At a certain point, you run after it, but it's going faster and faster and you don't catch it. So that's the terrifying geophysical reality because all these things are interconnected. Roger, but come back to France's point, which is you say that, you say that. science isn't political. Yeah. If it isn't political, why isn't, why aren't governments doing more about it? Well, my answer to why governments aren't doing anything about it is a lot more disputable because it's a subject, right?

You know, I mean, everyone's got their own theory. I mean, I'm a sociologist, so I can give you some reasons, which I hope are reasonably objective, as you might say, but they're disputable, okay? But I think there's two main reasons in the literature, as you might say, on what is holding governments back. So the first problem is the collective action problem, which is the technical word for, I'm not going to do it because no one else is. And we all know this from our personal lives or clearing up litter in the street. Everyone wants to litter to be cleared up, but no one's doing it because why should I do it? And you can see this happening over and over again with competing nation states.

You've just described the cleaning schedule at the trigonometry studio, Roger. Exactly, exactly, yeah, the famous washing up situation in student health. Everyone knows it, don't I? So what's been happening for 30 years is people don't want to engage in what are now substantial costs. Let's not beat around the bush. the substantial cost in reducing carbon in the time we've got in order to not, you know, minimise this substantial risk. And the other reason, which is potentially more controversial, but I think it's the substantial

evidence for it, which is that the world economy is controlled by the corporate companies, and the corporate companies are dedicated to maintaining profit maximization, and profit maximisation depends upon the fossil fuel economy. And they have very powerful lobbying mechanisms. And over the last 30 years, a little bit like what happened with tobacco in the 1970s and 1980s, they have very powerful PR machines to create confusion on what the substantial risks are. And that's a massive problem because if people think, you know, like you just said, well, if it's not really certain, then why don't we just carry on flying to Spain? It creates that confusion. And that's a disaster, of course, as it was a disaster in terms of convincing the public about the dangers

of lung cancer with tobacco. So those are the two things that we seem to be up against. And I think one of the ways of combating this, as you might say, is to communicate to the general public that it's in everyone's interest as a parent, as a citizen, as a human being to engage with this and pressurise governments to counteract the special interests in society that want to make money out of, you know, keeping the system in the same way as it has been. But isn't the problem, Roger, going to be persuading governments, especially persuading third world nations, that in order to do this, they have to act against their own financial self-interest. That is surely a non-argument, isn't it? It's very difficult. I'm not going to pretend

we're not in a complete mess, right? As a social scientist, I would say that the situation is awful, one because we're facing this a terrible threat, and also because the human race is not very good at looking after its long-term interests. So, yes, I agree with you. But I think what we need to consider here is not, you know, something doesn't work, but more like what is the most effective way of dealing with it relative to other options. So it's not acceptable in terms of an argument to say, well, Roger, that doesn't sound like it's going to work. You have a responsibility to say what will work other than sitting on your sitee on social media, just being cynical. Because what we do know is just sitting on your fatigue doing nothing guarantees.

catastrophe, you see what I mean. So what I'm here to suggest, I suppose, is it's a long shot, but the long shot, the most effective way of bringing about political change. And let's not forget, there's been plenty of radical political change in the past. So it's not impossible. But inso much as it is possible, it requires people to step up into their responsibilities as parents, as members of their community, as citizens, and say to governments, this is an unacceptable level of risk. Regardless of our culture, our backgrounds, our politics, everyone agrees, unless you're on the extreme of the political spectrum

or near-hast or, you know, mad. Everyone agrees we don't want to have this catastrophe locked in. Because what we need to understand here is that once this goes, It's almost impossible to bring it back. Roger, you talk about responsibility. So we all three of us sitting here in the United Kingdom. There'll be people watching this all over the Western world primarily. What percentage of global emissions is the UK currently responsible for?

It's around 2%. Right. So hold on. Let me pose a question. I know that you know where I'm going, but just so that our viewers get to hear me say it. So if we are responsible for 2% of global emissions, emissions. Surely, with countries like China and India, which are only doing the best, Francis says, the best for their citizens trying to catch up in the economic race, trying to prevent

their children from starving to death from malnutrition and so on, those countries being responsible for a huge percentage of the world's emissions. How does shutting down our level of well-being and consumption and whatever really help anything? That's a question that I think, a reasonable question a lot of people will be asking, isn't it? Yeah, well, there's several things to say about this. The first thing to say is how you account for the 2%. There's a little slight of hand, as it were, statistically here, or a large slight of hand. And it goes like this. In the 1980s and 1990s, a lot of the production of what we consume in this country was based in Britain. And so the carbon emissions from those industries was part of our account, as you might say. Now, as we

all know, over the last 30 years, Britain's largely deindustrialised, and a large proportion of what we consume in this country is produced in China and various other countries. So it's a little bit of a problem to say, well, we're just sitting here only producing 2% of emissions. Do you have an estimate for what it should be? No, I can give you an interesting figure, which is A recent estimate is the city of London, our financing produces, the financing that happens in the city of London is around 15% of emissions, which is a slightly different point because, you know, Britain does three things. It produces emissions, it consumes emissions, and it finances emissions. So we have to look at all those things. I don't have the figure on what we produce.

But obviously, it's not going to be, I don't have a figure. on what the carbon emissions are of everything we produce. But I accept it's not an enormous percentage, which brings us back to the collective action problem, which is, I know what you're getting at. It's a bit like, why should we reduce emissions if no one else's? Well, because we're on the pathway to hell if we don't. No, but with respect, it isn't that simple.

It's not why should we do anything if no one else is. It's more like, why should we do anything when what we do make sure. no impact. Okay. So what happens when people, when a country makes a start on something, it often, though not necessarily, but it often triggers other countries doing the same. So you saw this a little bit with the denuclearization of nuclear weapons and that's that area. So what happens is one country decides to make a move and then it encourages other countries. Now, that is not guaranteed. But the point here is if everyone sits in their corner and says, well, I'm not going to move unless other people do, then we know what happens, right?

It's well established in game theory and what have you, is everyone loses. And again, everyone loses big time and potentially forever. So we can't underestimate the situation. There's another issue, though, on a moral level that needs to be considered here. well, two. One is historically, the global North has been responsible for 90% of those emissions. It's only in the last 10 years that China has come up, you know, producing many of the goods, of course, for the Western world to consume. So it's a little bit problematic morally for us to say, well, you know, we produce this problem and now we don't want to bear any responsibility for it.

And the other thing is still substantially speaking, most of the world's emissions are produced and consumed in the global north. So it's still really a matter of Western Europe, North America and China coming together and making this happen. And any pressure that citizens can produce on their governments is going to help this process move along. That's the bottom line. It's a great answer, Roger, and it's a very, very. good point as well because like with anything like you said game theory somebody needs to make the most first move somebody needs to make the stand and so on and so forth i want to move the question uh the interview along now to extinction rebellion hey k k k do you like feeling silky and smooth like a sexual

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Excellent. Now, Extinction Rebellion very, very much hit the headlines in 2019, particularly. What is Extinction Rebellion? Because I've looked at it. And, you know, there's lots of contrasting ideas here. You know, it doesn't seem to be a centralised organisation. So could you explain to us and everybody else, what is Extinction Rebellion and what are its goals? Okay, well, Extinction Rebellion is a civil disobedience organisation. It exists to create civil disobedience. So I need to explain civil disobedience a little bit.

Civil disperience is often misunderstood as, you know, unpleasant people causing disruption for no good reason, okay? And what I need to, you know, to get to get to the heart of the matter, what civil disobedience does is it challenges society to engage morally with an issue when does a substantial violation of society's mind? That's where it primarily works. And we all know the example of Martin Luther King in the American South with the racism in the 1960s. And what the Martin Luther King's organisation decided to do after 70 years of asking for their rights was, I'm going to minute, you know, we can't wait any longer, people need their rights and they engage in civil disobedience, sitting in the road and such like getting arrested, of going to prison. And what that did was it produced the headlines, it produced a national debate on what it meant to be American, what it meant to have equal rights. And over seven or eight

years, the attitudes in America changed from, you know, those blacks down in the south, you know, whatever, through to, no, this is an absolutely important issue and our self-respect, individual and as a nation is at stake, and racism is intolerable. So what extinction rebellion is, is set to do is to produce a similar process on climate change, which is climate change is no longer just a little issue, a little bit like what it was in America in terms of black rights. It's not a peripheral issue. It's central to our conception of moral self-respect as a society. We're in a society where our fundamental value is we respect human life, we respect our children, we respect giving people, you know, not shitting on people for no good reason.

Roger, if I could just push back on you just ever so slightly there. So I'm really glad we talked about the civil disobedience thing. I remember an incident, I think it was in 2019, where there was an Extinction Rebellion protester who got on top of a DLR train at Canning Town. And I used to be a teacher around there. And the fury that was unleashed at that, What seemed to me in particular to somebody who had worked in that area for many, many years,

was that it was a type of deafness to the people who lived and worked in that particular community, who were primarily working class. The moment you start interfering with their way of getting into work, that means they're not going to get paid because a lot of them are zero-hours contract. So doesn't this type of political disobedience alienate the very people that you're trying to win over? The fact of the matter is, when people engage in civil disobedience, they end up upsetting a lot of people. And the reason of that is because a lot of people quite understandably don't want to deal with the cognitive dissonance of believing one thing and something else happening. And there's a process, there's a well-established process, which is people hate them when they start off, and then they start thinking, well, I still think that what's the process.

they're doing is terrible, but I have to accept they have a point, and then they go through to the process of going, actually, you know, these guys are right. You know, we're transgressing our basic values here. Now, that's not a smooth process. We're living in the real world here. And in every civil disobedience campaign, there's going to be off moments and, you know, difficulties and things which aren't tactically appropriate, as you might say. But the substantial point here is there's no way of changing society in a fundamental way without upsetting people. But the key point here, and this is often misunderstood about civil disobedience, civil disobedience isn't a process of shutting down debate.

And this is one of the reasons I wanted to come on today, is to make this argument that civil disobedience, when it's done well, right? You know, we all know things can be doing well and done badly. But when it's done well, what civil disobedience is about is not just disruption. It is disruption because the disruption is required to get attention. But once you've got that attention, the idea is there's a whole other side to the equation, which is dialogue. You sit down with your opponent and you're engaging respectful communication in order to find a resolution.

So what I want to communicate is this is at the heart of our democratic. culture, which is you disagree with people, you talk to them. And through talking, you come to some common ground. Now, the reason civil disobedience is necessary, and obviously a lot of the time it's not, you know, a lot of the time you can sit down and resolve things. But sometimes in society and in history, as we all know, there's entrenched power, there's injustice, and it's right, as we all agree, with the suffragettes or the civil rights movements or the early trade unions, it was right for them to engage in civil disobedience if it was properly done and engaging this dialogue. And that's one of the reasons I go around, you know, talking to people about this

because the communication is vital in order for us to come together. Otherwise, you spiral into this, you know, over-polarisation, as the phrase goes. And that, you know, leads to all the problems that we see in society in many ways at the moment, not least in the marriage, of course. Roger, you're almost giving me goosebumps here the idea that people from different sides can talk rationally and discuss things and have these conversations. You mentioned earlier when we were talking about the climate issue directly, that you feel that a large reason for government in action is that they're heavily influenced by corporate lobbyists and so on. Do you think that if that is true, there will be a lot of interference with what Extinction Rebellion is doing

from those sorts of organizations. Because if big tech companies don't want this to happen, if big corporations don't want this to happen, well, as we've seen recently, they have the power to take people off their platform. They have the power to stop people from communicating, from organizing, from doing all sorts of things. So are you concerned about the interference of big corporations into our politics, into the sort of discussions that even we're having here today? Well, it goes without saying that when society is engaged in terrible activities, then it's very difficult to change them, and it's going to be a battle.

And our history is full of battles for justice, for rights. And if you look at that history, it's not a straight line. It's very difficult, and often they fail, and then they come back, and maybe they, you know, become corrupt and they collapse and then they come back. It's not a straight line thing. But what we know is two things, right? Number one is the powers that be never give up power without a fight. That's just the way it is. And secondly, if you mobilise enough people power, it's possible. It's never inevitable, of course, but it's possible and it's happened many times that you can win. And there's a good quote from Gandhi on this, who obviously knew a thing or two about, you know, changing things, not least with regard to the British Empire.

But he said, first of all, they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, and then you win. So those of us that are involved in civil disobedience globally have that on our wall. Because what we know is when the corporations and people that have special interests in maintaining, in carbon emissions, tell lies about us and try and turn people off of us, we know we're getting somewhere because we're ruffling the feathers. And the name of the game, of course, is to persist in our activities until we start winning. And that's really the strategy of extinction rebellion. And what would you say to those people, Roger, go, look, the planet is warming up. That's indisputable. But it's not man-made. This is just part of what the planet

It goes through ice stage, then it goes through warmer, it goes through warmer periods. And what you're essentially trying to do is trying to stop a natural phenomenon. Yeah, well, I think with all due respect, that's one of those sort of flat earth theories at this stage of the game. And obviously, lots of people of various psychological reasons might want to believe that the earth is flat and so be it. But intimate as democratic debates about, you know, basing our discussions on what's real. what the science says, then the issue is beyond dispute at this state. 99% of scientists around the world say that climate change is caused by human activities. So the debate has largely moved on in terms of anyone that's interested in what's actually happening.

And the real issue now is how bad is it? You know, at what point is it going to be a situation of no return? and how exactly is this tragedy going to play out if we don't get our act together? Roger, I'm curious what you think, because I've always thought that given the situation you've described, I don't understand, and I say this as someone whose wife was essentially evacuated from the Chernobyl area, so I'm aware of the risks, but I don't understand why nuclear power isn't seen as a large part of the solution. Where are you or Extinction Rebellion on that issue? Okay, so it's important to understand that Extinction Rebellion is not, does not exist to take over the world.

It's a relatively humble proposition. Just Canning Town. That was only for two hours. Okay, so, you know, everyone does something wrong for least two hours in their life. Let's put it like that. The point of extinction rebellion is that we see ourselves in the heart of what you might call the open democratic tradition in the Western world. And what that concretely means is we engage in respectful civil disobedience and I've described why and how that works. But also, we don't engage in some sort of Leninist project that we're so important that we can tell the British public,

how they're going to respond to the climate crisis. That's not our job. It's the job for the democratic process. Our job is to say to society and say to the government, we have to massively reduce carbon emissions because that's what the science dictates. That's not an issue of politics. It's an issue of morality and basic common sense.

Now, how we do it is not our job, because we're not experts in nuclear power. We're not experts in knowing the collective mind of the British public. Maybe the British public wants to support nuclear power, maybe wants to, you know, do renewable energy. So I've got my own personal views on it, but I don't think that's what I'm here to say. What I'm here to say is that what extinction rebellion is suggesting

is that what I think is a genius solution to the very emotional, debate that we need to have around what needs to be done. It's not going to be easy. Everyone knows it's not going to be easy. It's big decisions to be made. And that solution is the Citizens Assembly. And what's a Citizen and Assembly is it has a technical definition,

which is you select people randomly from the country to sit in an assembly and a little bit like a court, people provide concrete, a perical evidence on what the situation is and what the options are. And then those ordinary people in the country, as representatives that you might say of the common will, the country, decide what should be done and how it should be done. So in other words, like if, for the sake of argument, 60% of the British public are working class, there will be 60% in the assembly. If 20% of the British public are people of colour, then there'll be 20%. If 30% come from the north of England, there'll be 30% if 1% of the population is super rich, they don't get to say what happens, there's only 1% of

those in the assembly. So it's profoundly democratic. But in terms of, you know, the things you've been talking about in your videos, what I think's interesting here is the process of deliberation, which is when you bring people together, and this has been empirically shown by the research, If you put people in the room and you give them several hours to communicate where they're at, you humanize the relationship. People aren't looking at something on Twitter. They're not, you know, just having a knee-jerk reaction to something they're read in the tabloid. They're talking to real human beings, eye-to-eye contact. And within half an hour, and I've personally done research on this, within half an hour and hour, people are all, you know, best of mates.

Because no one likes to be an idiot, right, in front of someone else. People naturally want to agree with each other when they're sitting down, assuming they're reasonable people, which most people are. And what that produces is a sense of common purpose. But we're all here. We've all got a difference. But we're all human beings. We're all British.

We're all part of a similar national community or whatever. And through that process, you've come up with a consensus. And what that does is reduces the polarization in the country between those that saying, you know, we don't want to do this, we do want to do that. Because once you've seen like a bus driver from Birmingham, as you might say, come out on the steps of thousands of parliament and say, you know, these 300 people from around the country have considered climate change, and this is what we think happen, then everyone's going to go.

Well, most people are going to go, fair enough, mate. You know, if he's said that and he's a normal person, he's not. not one of those men in suits, then you can see how this can help to heal, you know, divisions. And what we're heading for is the mother of all divisions on the climate crisis, because every month and year that it goes by, the more difficult, you know, the decisions are going to be, have to be made. And, you know, this has a implications really more generally for the polarisation that we see in our society today. And Roger, do you think this is about what you're going to win?

Because you're up against some pretty big opponents, let's be fair. You've already just said, you know, these huge multinational corporations, they've got billions and billions of dollars and all the rest of it and the best lawyers in the world backing them. Yes, well, the answer to that is yes. I think we will win. And the reason for that is because there's overwhelming evidence now that this is a terrible, terrible threat that violates all human values

and violates everyone's life, whether they're rich or poor or wherever they live in the world. But the caveat is whether we make that decision in time, right? That's the really scary thing here. But this is the important thing to understand. We're not dealing with a social issue here. We're not dealing with, you know, slavery or human rights or trade union rights where if you don't sort them out this year,

they're going to be, you know, just as bad next year, but not lots worse. What we're dealing with here is a geophysical situation. We're dealing with a meteorite coming towards the earth. You understand what I'm saying. In other words, if you don't deal with it today, it's going to be 10 times worse tomorrow. And if you don't deal with it tomorrow, it's going to be 100. In other words, we've got no time. And that's not an ideological, you know, pressurizing statement.

It's the physics of it in the same way as you go to a doctor. And you say, look, if you don't deal with this cancer, if you go too late, you're dead, right? That's how nature works. That's how physics works. So that's the really important thing to communicate to people. And the last thing I want to say is, you know, for myself and for many people involved in Extinction Rebellion, and for many people, I think, in the country as well, the issue really isn't at the end of the day, will we win, won't we win? It's more an issue of, I have respect for myself as a citizen, as an upright, person and I don't want to be, you know, on my deathbed going, well, I knew about the climate crisis, but I just sat on social media, you know, being cynical about it and doing nothing.

I felt whatever happens, I need to step up and make a stand. And in our history, that's really the reason why many people get involved in trying to improve society is because they want to feel the self-respect of being a citizen, being a parent, and all the rest of it. And that's my invitation, I suppose, to people listening to this and maybe to the two of you. You can come down to Extinction Rebellion and interview people, right?

I'd love Francis to be at the forefront of that effort. Yeah. But Roger, thank you so much. It's been a wonderful and genuinely insightful interview. We always finish our interviews with the same question, which is Constantine. What's the one thing we're not talking about as a society other than climate change that we really should be?

Well, I think what I've been trying to elude to, as you might say, in this conversation, is there's a broader issue here, which I know you guys have been talking about, which is how we can create a society where people can have differences, but not dismiss people and try and cancel each other and try and destroy each other. And that's a 5,000-year debate, as I think you probably know. So probably we're not going to totally sort it out. Well, what I would like to suggest, I suppose, is what Extinction Rebell is pointing towards is several mechanisms through which we can create that more healthy society, through respectful civil disobedience where things are definitely going up the rails,

and also through citizens' assemblies, where people sit down and have done. dialogues with each other and quickly realize we're all human, right? We all make mistakes. We all do Cunning streets. You know, we're all in the same boat and we're all going to be dead soon. So, you know, we've only got one live. So let's get things in perspective and work together. And that's the most enjoyable way to live anyway, isn't it?

As far as I'm aware. It is. It is, Roger. And we really genuinely thank you for coming on the show and for talking about all of this, I think, you know, frankly, whether people agree with you and everything and disagree with you, I think everybody would have to recognize that history has been made by people like you, whether they like that fact or not, that is reality. People who have strong convictions, believe in something, whatever that is, and try and encourage others to do

the same. And in my view, whatever people's political views or views on this issue, as long as as everybody is coming at it from a place of trying to have a discussion, having a civil conversation, yes, you can do a little bit of civil disobedience and disruption as well, if you feel that strongly about it. I think that's all for the best, frankly, irrespective of what those people are actually saying, frankly. So the methods, I think, are perfectly legitimate. And I'm really pleased to have had you on the show for people to see where you're coming from. Absolutely, Roger. And if people want to follow you on social media, I know that we've been trashing it for the last hour or so, or if they want to get involved in your cause,

what is the best way to do that? Yes, if you look of Extinction Rebellion on social media, it'll put you in all the different social media channels. And yeah, there's 400 groups around the UK. I think there's 700 groups around the world. So yes, get involved and do your bit. Thanks very much. Thanks, Roger. And thank you for watching. We will see you very soon with another interview or a live stream, all of them at 7pm UK time. Take care and see you soon, guys. This episode is brought to you by Netflix's remarkably bright creatures. What if a Pacific octopus held the key to a mystery that could heal your heart?

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