The move to haul climate change protesters off London’s streets reflects a scientifically and economically illiterate political and media elite in denial about the issue

Police and Extinction Rebellion protesters on Waterloo Bridge in London Leon Neal/Getty Images

My lunchtime runs in London have been joyfully car-free of late, thanks to climate activists blocking key streets. But that’s not why I’m writing this defence of the protests, which were banned last night.

The reason is that, along with student climate strikes, the Extinction Rebellion movement has helped propel environmental issues to be one of the top public concerns.

Meanwhile, the backlash has drawn out its critics’ scientific illiteracy and failure to grasp the scale of the challenge posed by climate change, laying bare why the protests, not just in the UK, but across Europe, Australia and elsewhere, are necessary.


Extinction Rebellion triggered a fair bit of criticism with its first wave of protests earlier in the year. But the latest response has been far more hostile. “It is certainly more voluminous and bile-filled now,” says Leo Hickman of Carbon Brief, which monitors UK media coverage of climate change.

Prime minister Boris Johnson set the tone when he spoke of “importunate nose-ringed climate change protesters” and “uncooperative crusties”. The Daily Telegraph branded the group a “millenarian death cult”. The Sun fumed: “Do they know our share of global greenhouse gases is now just 1.2 per cent?” The Daily Mail even trotted out the old “global warming is good for you” trope.

On the attack

Perhaps the attacks are a sign people have realised the protests aren’t just a fun sideshow, but are setting the agenda. Maybe that is why Andrea Leadsom, the minister responsible for energy policy, has joined the criticisms by saying people blocking roads in London are protesting in “the wrong country” because the UK has cut emissions hugely since 1990. That is utterly missing the point. The point is the future.

The fact is global carbon emissions are still rising, when they need to fall. The UK is a small emitter, but it has hefty per-capita emissions. And it has a historical debt, with responsibility for up to 3 per cent of all global warming.

Moreover, the UK government admits it is set to miss carbon targets from the mid-2020s. That is because we have largely done the easy stuff, swapping coal power for wind power.

The next carbon cuts will require behaviour and lifestyle changes, as a report for the UK government’s climate advisers made clear last week. If the political and media class claim to be serious about climate change but have a tantrum over traffic disruption, imagine their response when pressure comes to bear on diet, flights and more.

Under scrutiny

Last week, New Scientist held its annual festival of science in east London not far from City Airport, a hotspot of the climate protests. One of our speakers was Astronomer Royal Martin Rees. He is a co-founder of the University of Cambridge’s Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, and one of the most clear-headed thinkers on the future of humanity there is.

Rees welcomed the presence of climate change protesters on the streets, and pointed out that if the UK were to invest in export-ready green-tech research, as it does in the defence and biomedical sectors, it could help cut global emissions by far more than it emits – and reap the rewards.

That is the scientifically and economically literate response to the climate change challenge. For the record, I strongly disagree with the view expressed by some prominent Extinction Rebellion members on the role the private sector has to play in cutting emissions. Some of the group’s more extreme claims and demands, such as net-zero emissions in the UK by 2025, are rightly facing scrutiny.

But the new wave of protest movements are creating a political space for action commensurate with the science. That should be embraced, rather than condemned.