Climate Activism Has a Cult Problem

[Valin]

The Free Press

As a member of Extinction Rebellion, writes Zion Lights, I watched people brainwashed into pulling outrageous stunts in the name of 'saving the planet.'

Zion Lights

January 23, 2023

Maybe you saw Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” smeared with two cans of tomato soup. Or the 20-year-old man who set fire to his arm at a tennis tournament, wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with the words “End UK Private Jets.” Or the traffic on London’s M25 highway blocked by protesters for days. One 24-year-old girl, Louise, climbed atop a crane on the highway. “I’m here because I don’t have a future,” she exclaimed between sobs.

All these stories feature young members of a movement that claims to fight climate change by demanding their governments stop using and producing fossil fuels immediately.  

Their methods seem unorthodox, and you’re probably wondering how defacing artwork or gluing your hand to the floor of a Volkswagen showroom reduces carbon emissions. I don’t blame you. 

The difference between me and you is I used to be one of them. 

(Snip)

In July 2020, XR announced that Roger no longer holds any formal role in the UK organization. But he has moved on. His latest project is a rebranding of the most extreme faction of XR, Just Stop Oil, which is supported by the Climate Emergency Fund, funded by Oscar-winning director Adam McKay and Rory Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy’s daughter, among others.

Roger’s apocalyptic rhetoric has become, if anything, more lurid: Here’s a choice quote from his 2019 pamphlet addressed to young people: “[Gangs] will see your mother, your sister, your girlfriend, and they will gang rape her on the kitchen table . . . they will take a cigarette lighter and burn your eyes out with it.” 

I have two children. And I believe deeply in fixing climate change and saving our planet—I’ve dedicated my life to that cause. But in no universe do I believe that terrifying people with images of rape and cigarette burnings will do anything other than paralyze exactly the people we want to activate.

Here’s the truth: if we stopped using oil today, thousands of people would be thrust into an even worse energy crisis, and the wheels of society would stop turning. We do need to replace fossil fuels—but with real alternatives, not the radical erasure Roger wants.

Here’s another truth: Just Stop Oil has nothing to do with saving the environment or waking people up to the climate emergency. It’s about one man, his ambitions for revolution and power, and the innocent children he has brainwashed to do his bidding. One day, I hope the spell can be broken.

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