Three articles explaining the contents of Extinction Rebellion's New Activists' Book, "This is Not a drill" and the urgency for expediting its publication.

Articles: 

 

1) https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/04/26/un-climate-chief-urges-immediate-action-save-planet-extinction-rebellions-new-book

 

Published on

Friday, April 26, 2019

byCommon Dreams

 

 

 

by Andrea Germanos, staff writer

3 Comments

Earth from space

 

"The truth is that if we continue to produce, consume, to function as we are doing now," said U.N. climate chief Patricia Espinosa, "we know that we are going toward a catastrophe." (Photo: Beth Scupham/flickr/cc)

 

Hurry it up.

 

That's the message from both the United Nation's climate chief and a climate mobilization group as they sound the alarm on the catastrophe that awaits if the world continues its business as usual.

 

In interviews with the Associated Press, Patricia Espinosa, who serves as executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), said that "the window of opportunity" to avert catastrophic global warming "is closing very soon."

 

That means capping global warming at a 1.5 degrees C threshold, she said. But, in order to do that, "much more political will" is needed.

 

"It doesn't mean that we need to wait 12 years and then look at it as the moment to do this," Espinosa said, referencing an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report released last year.

 

Changes to the status quo, she argued, need to be immediate.

 

"The truth is that if we continue to produce, consume, to function as we are doing now," she told AP, "we know that we are going toward a catastrophe."

 

We must "get to a moment where leaders recognize that there is no option," said Espinosa.

 

One group that recognizes that time crunch is Extinction Rebellion (XR).

 

Activists with the climate mobilization targeted London this week and last week, staging occupations of public spaces in the city to draw attention to the urgency of climate action. At one action, an XR group unfurled a banner on a train in London that read, "Business as usual = death."

 

The group also has a new book coming out, which will be released three months earlier than originally planned.

 

"This Is Not a Drill by Extinction Rebellion went from manuscript to the printers in 10 days and is being rushed out by Penguin for 3 June," the Guardian reported Friday.

 

It was originally set to come out in September—but that wouldn't be soon enough, said Penguin editor Tom Penn.

 

"We thought, 'This is an emergency, and we have to react like it's an emergency,'" Penn told the Guardian.

 

As such, the book aims to offer activists a sort of toolkit.

 

"This is not just about a climate emergency, it's also ecological—habitat loss, the loss of biodiversity, that's what's going to kill us first," said Extinction Rebellion activist William Skeaping.

 

"This book is about what we can all begin to do, and because it's not by just one author, it's the crowdsourced knowledge of our movement," he said.

 

Copies of the book can already be pre-ordered.

 

A statement released by the publisher says: "Now or never, we need to be radical. We need to rise up. And we need to rebel."

 

"This is a book of truth and action. It has facts to arm you, stories to empower you, pages to fill in and pages to rip out, alongside instructions on how to rebel—from organizing a roadblock to facing arrest," it says.

 

"By the time you finish this book," the statement adds, "you will have become an Extinction Rebellion activist. Act now before it's too late."

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2) https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/apr/26/extinction-rebellion-rushes-activists-handbook-this-is-not-a-drill-into-print

 

 

 

By Alison Flood

 

Fri 26 Apr 2019 12.01 BST

 

PHOTO:  Extinction Rebellion protesters heading to Parliament Square in London on 18 April.

 ‘This is an emergency.’ … Extinction Rebellion protesters heading to Parliament Square in London on 18 April. Photograph: Brais G Rouco

 

 

Former archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams and Green Party MP Caroline Lucas are among the contributors to a forthcoming handbook about how to become an Extinction Rebellion activist, which will feature instructions on everything from organising roadblocks to dealing with arrest.

 

As 65,000 copies of Swedish student Greta Thunberg’s manifesto Rejoignez-nous (Join Us) hit French bookshops this week – with British publishers also understood to be chasing English rights to the book by the teenager who has sparked a global youth movement – This Is Not a Drill by Extinction Rebellion went from manuscript to the printers in 10 days and is being rushed out by Penguin for 3 June.

 

The book, which will also feature contributions from names including Susie Orbach, Kate Raworth and Clive Lewis, was originally planned for September. Penguin editor Tom Penn said: “We thought, ‘This is an emergency, and we have to react like it’s an emergency.’”

 

 

The activists in the book write: “This is our last chance to do anything about the global climate and ecological emergency. Our last chance to save the world as we know it. Now or never, we need to be radical. We need to rise up. And we need to rebel. This is a book of truth and action.”

 

Extinction Rebellion activist William Skeaping, who is also one of the book’s four editors, said it had originally been envisaged as a manifesto, “but we felt that didn’t really capture the movement, which is far more emotional and personal and still being developed”.

 

“When we were giving advice, we wanted not just to be speaking in platitudes but to have lived the experience. We’ve had a good start, but there is so much more to be done,” Skeaping said.

 

The book, said Penn, is in two parts – the first looking at how “we’re in denial, and need to understand what the climate emergency means”, as well as “delving into the psychological trauma of what it means to understand our world is changing irrevocably”. The second is a handbook for activists, with stories by people Skeaping described as being “on the front lines of climate emergencies”, from a Himalayan farmer to a firefighter in California and the president of the Maldives.

 

“These are people who are literally about to die – they’re reminders of how close these front lines are,” said Skeaping. “This is not just about a climate emergency, it’s also ecological – habitat loss, the loss of biodiversity, that’s what’s going to kill us first. This book is about what we can all begin to do, and because it’s not by just one author, it’s the crowdsourced knowledge of our movement.”

 

With activists fresh from gluing themselves to the London Stock Exchange and protesting semi-naked in the House of Commons, Extinction Rebellion is an international protest group that uses non-violent civil disobedience in its environmental campaigns.

 

Penn admitted there were questions for an environmental group releasing a printed book. But This Is Not A Drill will be printed, he said, in a carbon-neutral paper mill that plants two trees for every one it uses, and it was felt the book needed to appear in print for maximum impact. “In an ideal world there would be an entirely non-impactful way of doing this, but this is a means to an end,” he said.

 

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Extinction Rebellion has three demands: It wants the government to

 1) “tell the truth” about climate change,

2) create a citizens’ assembly to guide action, and

3) set a target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2025.

 

Rupert Read, who is part of the movement’s political strategy group, says Extinction Rebellion’s founders wanted a set of clear and unassailable asks, rather than a detailed manifesto. “To not get bogged down on a detailed programme, but to have something everyone could agree on,” he says.

 

3. https://www.newscientist.com/article/2200755-the-science-behind-extinction-rebellions-three-climate-change-demands/

By Adam Vaughan

Hundreds of climate change campaigners will leave the streets of London today, following 11 days of protests that brought parts of the capital to a standstill and led to more than a thousand arrests. In a parting shot, protestors glued themselves to the London Stock Exchange this morning.

Attention will now swing towards the demands of the group behind the protests, Extinction Rebellion, who are hoping for negotiations with the UK government. Meetings with environment secretary Michael Gove and energy minister Claire Perry are expected next week.

Any government talks will follow an extraordinary fortnight that saw thousands of schoolchildren strike for climate action for a third time, Greta Thunberg meet MPs and party leaders, and Sir David Attenborough warn of climate change’s grave threat on primetime TV.

 

 

Extinction Rebellion has three demands for the UK. It wants the government to “tell the truth” about climate change, create a citizens’ assembly to guide action, and set a target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2025.

Rupert Read, who is part of the movement’s political strategy group, says Extinction Rebellion’s founders wanted a set of clear and unassailable asks, rather than a detailed manifesto. “To not get bogged down on a detailed programme, but to have something everyone could agree on,” he says.

2025 challenge

To call a 2025 net zero greenhouse gas target radical would be an understatement. The UK’s current goal is to, by 2050, emit 80 per cent less than the country did in 1990 – a target the country is not currently on track for. Next week, the government’s climate advisers will likely recommend the 2050 target is upgraded to net zero.

Mark Maslin of University College London, UK, thinks acheiving net zero emissions in six years’ time instead is unrealistic. “2025 is too close as many of the changes require changes to infrastructure, ownership and of course replanting trees and rewilding, all of which take decades,” he says.

Read concedes that some in the group thought a later date, of around 2029, would be more credible. “I’m 100 per cent behind the 2025 demand myself, as are most people in Extinction Rebellion, although there were some people who were in disagreement,” he says.

Some in the group told New Scientist that, while challenging targets are necessary, it is naïve to suggest that 2025 could be achieved.

But Read says 2025 could be met by a “green new deal” to replace gas boilers in millions of homes. He adds that old cars would have to be permanently taken off the road, and not be replaced by electric models.

Ecological emergency

Telling the truth would help reach the 2025 goal, he says. Extinction Rebellion is demanding that the government “must tell the truth by declaring a climate and ecological emergency.” Perry responded this week that “what counts is actions”.

Read says one facet of this demand is about language and conveying the scale of change required to tackle climate change. “It means declare a climate emergency. Tell the public this is an existential threat. This is not just about the environment, but about everything. That we will have to change an awful lot,” he says.

A second aspect of the movement’s “truth” demand is accounting. Official figures state that the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions have fallen 44 per cent since 1990. But this does not include the emissions of the goods and services we consume, nor those from international air travel or shipping.

Thunberg attacked that omission in her speech to MPs on Tuesday, which she described as “very creative carbon accounting.”

Ask the people

Extinction Rebellion’s last ask is for the creation of citizens’ assemblies to guide action and policy. Oxford City Council has become the first local authority to promise one.

But what if such forums reveal that many people are actually quite conservative about action on climate change, as some studies suggest? “We don’t know. We’d be very disappointed and would have to think again,” says Read, though he believes it highly likely the assemblies would demand radical action.

Even if none of the demands are acquiesced to, the group has already arguably had an impact. The Labour party has endorsed them, and various politicians are suddenly talking about climate change and the action needed.

“One way of putting what Extinction Rebellion exists for is: ‘to make the politically impossible, politically possible’,” says Read.