Why Extinction Rebellion is a plague on the working classes (and the planet) – GP Taylor

Not much attention was given at the time as that beautiful summer came on the back of several cold winters, with scientists saying that we could be in line for another ice age. Sadly, history has proven that we humans have caused the planet to react to our way of life.

Regardless of political opinion, age or gender, each one of us has to admit something is wrong and start to change our lifestyles. For me, I have given up flying abroad on holiday. My love of fast convertibles has been put aside and I now drive a very fuel efficient, low emission, box on wheels.

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I try to walk to where I am going and leave the car at home. I try to shop locally and buy food with low transport miles. The meat I eat is from Yorkshire farms. I have even taken to sending back single use plastic to the head offices of supermarkets in the hope that they will stop using the stuff.

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What I don’t do is dig up the ancient lawn of a university, put up barricades in the road, stop ambulances going to emergencies and sicken off people trying to get to work, costing the taxpayers millions of pounds. Extinction Rebellion are doing just that. When I first heard of them, I thought they were just a bunch of like-minded people with the same concerns as me in regards to climate change. Yet, my sympathy to their ideals has soon begun to wear thin.

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What I quickly saw was mainly a group of privileged, middle class, white people stopping others from getting to work and going about their daily business. All that their actions have done is to quickly put working people off supporting their cause. They seem to want to confront communities rather than work with them.

XR, as they are known, appear to have no connection with the working class and have a message that only resonates in the wine bars of Islington. As they have expanded their media presence, I believe XR have managed to alienate more and more people. Everyone knows there is a climate emergency. We hear it every day on the news and don’t have to have it rammed down our throats by a bunch of eco-warriors and the annoying Saint Greta Thunberg. Cressida Dick said that the two week XR protest last year cost the country £21m in policing costs. That is an outrageous waste of money.

Do the protesters not understand that the British Government is doing everything it can to slow down climate change? From next year, households will not be allowed to burn coal and wet logs. Within a few years, the sale of petrol and diesel cars will be stopped. The remaining coal-fired power stations will be closed by 2025 and the country will be carbon neutral by 2050. More and more energy is being created from renewable sources.

That is some going in a short period and should be admired. All that XR will do if they carry on their antics, will be to turn off the public to supporting such positive action. If XR really are so committed to fighting climate change, then why haven’t they all cycled off to China to lobby about the 9.8bn tons of carbon dioxide they emit every year?

After all, any measures that the British public have forced on them is totally obscured by the likes of the USA, India, Russia and Japan who are some of the world’s biggest polluters. I would give more support to XR if they brought the streets of some of these countries to a halt. I dare them to dig up the lawn of the White House or stand in front of the bulldozers in the Amazon.

Yet that will never happen because protesters know that they will be given short shrift in those countries and possibly a good beating by the security forces. In Britain, all that happens is the Bobby looks on as crimes are committed, fearful they might be seen as not being ‘woke’ enough if they were actually to do their job protecting property and preventing a breach of the peace.

The law is the law. I suspect that if the protesters were working class lads from the local council estate, they would have been dragged off the university lawn and locked up before the first sod had been dug. That is the problem.

Climate change activism is class based. It is hard to be eco-friendly when you can’t afford an electric car or sustainably sourced food and don’t earn enough to pay the rent. XR can shout as loud as they like, but until they are brave enough to take on China and America, the world will still be going to hell in a handcart.

GP Taylor is a writer and broadcaster from North Yorkshire.