Lily Cole: Welcome to Who Cares Wins, with me Lily Cole.
Farhana Yamin: We can't just rely on the established machinery of law and the established machinery of lawmaking, of norm making. We have to do something different.
Caroline Lucas: I think one of the most toxic ideas ever out there was the idea that individuals can't make a difference. They can, and we do, and working together, we can do anything if we really put our minds to it.
Dr Gail Bradbrook: We must have a grownup conversation about the political economy. This is not about coming out pro this system or anti that system. My own personal view is, I think the system needs upcycling. Take the best of it and move it forward, so it's not destroying life on Earth.
Zac Goldsmith: So I think something has shifted. I feel there's a stirring in global politics, it’s a recognition that this is a moment for a change. I'm maybe I'm being too optimistic, but it feels that way from the discussions that I'm having.
Lily Cole: At the heart of every issue that intersects with the environment you find contradictions tensions and divergent perspectives, and these issues are complex and changing. Most of us want a happy life and a healthy planet. But many people have different ideas about the right way to travel towards it. In this new podcast series, I'll be sharing parts of my research from my book Who Cares Wins, interviewing some of the leading and conflicting voices in contemporary debates, such as technology, food, gender, politics and looking at how they intersect with our environment.
I see myself a bit like sellotape, ribbon or string holding together divergent voices and sort of asking ,’ who cares who wins?’
In 2018, the UN called on policymakers to make ‘transformative systemic change’ by 2030 in order to stay within safer boundaries of climate change. But how do we transform our systems? Let's not forget our systems are malleable and always evolving. Indeed, they have transformed many times over into the shape of representative democracy that most countries have today.
Yet when it comes to the environment, they seem to have been stubbornly reticent to change. Scientists have been pointing out the risks of global warming with increasing urgency since the mid 19th century, when American scientist and women's rights, campaigner, Eunice Newton Foot first discovered the carbon dioxide traps heat.
In the 1960s the US government was warning of the risks of climate change. And in 1988, whilst I was still wearing diapers, NASA scientist, James Hansen testified before the US Senate saying, “the greenhouse effect has been detected and it is changing our climate now.” So 32 years later, my own daughter out of diapers, why have we reached this point of crisis? What does stop the system from transforming itself to protect our only life support system thus far? Is our legal and political machinery up to the job? Why are children and adults taking to the streets around the world and in some cases, inciting arrest in order to try and change our laws?
In this week's episode, I speak with both law makers and law breakers to try and understand how change happens. In the spirit of this podcast, I’ve spoken to two politicians, both fiercely committed to the environment, but existing within very different political camps in the UK: the Greens and the Conservatives.
Zac Goldsmith was editor of the Ecologist for nearly 10 years. After losing his seat as a Conservative MP in the 2019 elections, he was recently given a life peerage in the House of Lords, which enabled him to continue his work as Minister for the Environment, a critical role at this moment in time, as the UK prepares to host the next United Nations Climate Change Conference called COP26 in 2021.
So, given the fact that you’re a very committed environmentalist and you're also working in the heart of our political system, I was really interested to learn your thoughts on how much the British government is doing and has done environmentally. And whether you feel it's enough, frankly.
Zac Goldsmith: I spent all my life as far back as I remember one way or another campaigning on environmental issues. So, I mean, it's not a job, it's what I do. And if I wasn't in politics, I'd be doing it in another way. And most of that time I've been on the outside and then I got one foot on the inside of the system by becoming an MP, but that still effectively means campaigning relentlessly to get government to do things.
And now for the last 14/15 months or so I've been a minister, which means I'm able to actually make stuff happen. And the answer to your question is that I will probably never think that government is doing enough. I don't think any government in the world is doing enough. I mean even Costa Rica, which has really been a marvel in terms of what they're doing, still has more to do.
But at the same time, there's no doubt in my mind that we have made huge, huge progress in recent months and probably in recent years as well. I mean, I don't think there's much interest in this stuff from a sort of newspaper and broadcast point of view. So I doubt many people know much of the stuff that's being done by government, but there is a lot. Boris Johnson at the last UNGA committed to doubling our climate funding to 11.6 billion (GBP).
And it was quite big news around the world, but I don't think it was reported at all in the UK. He also committed that a big chunk of that uplift will be spent on nature based solutions to climate change, which for me, it's like almost more important than the first part of the announcement. There is no pathway to net zero at all, that doesn't involve massive escalation in our efforts in relation to forests, mangroves and so on. And yet it only gets about 3% of climate finance, which is madness.
We've been creating more and more programs, which are really pioneering. We've got a blue planet farm for ocean conservation, half a billion pounds launching early next year, we got a landscape's fund to try and help create wildlife corridors, transboundary, linking countries together, creating safe passage for animals, but also creating jobs for people who live in and around those corridors.
We’re leading the campaign to get the world to commit to protecting 30% of the world's ocean by 2030. There's a lot of really good stuff happening internationally. It's not enough clearly it's not enough, but then I don't think there's enough public money generally to solve this problem. All the countries in the world could double their climate finance and commit to putting more money into nature based solutions. It's not going to be a patch on the amount of money that's currently flowing into destroying nature. Now, if you look at the top 50 food producing countries, they spend about $700 billion a year subsidising land use, and usually destructive land use. That’s four or five times bigger than all of the world's Aid agencies combined.
So if we could get countries to spend that money in a way that supports nature and sustainability, that would be gigantic. It would be huge. And by coincidence that $700 billion figure corresponds with the sort of general consensus as to how much money is needed every year to invest in nature, to reverse the extinction crisis that's happening at the moment.
We are legislating in the UK to replace our land use subsidy system, the common agricultural policy, with the new system that pays landowners only if they deliver public goods like environmental stewardship. So we haven't done it yet, but we're in the process of doing it. But that is a very, very powerful lever. And if having done that in the UK, we can persuade other countries to join a big coalition of other countries, willing to do the same that's huge, We have trade. Even if we clean up our own house here in the UK, we're still importing stuff that has huge environmental impact. 80% of deforestation is caused by commodities. And when we import commodities, whether it's palm oil or soy or cocoa or whatever, we're effectively importing large scale deforestation.
So we're going to need to clean up our supply chains and we've taken the first step towards doing that, which is to make it a requirement on big business to ensure that when they import commodities, they're not importing deforestation, but the only way that's going to work is if we get other countries to do the same.
So we're trying to build a coalition of countries now willing to take the same step. And if we get a critical mass of countries willing to clean up their supply chains, that alone could be big enough to flip the market in favour of protecting forest. If you think that today, the incentives to destroy forest are 40 times bigger than the incentives to protect forests. So for as long as that remains true, everything else we're doing is tinkering around the edges. We are going to lose all our forest. And when we lose our forest, we lose our biodiversity. We lose the greatest regulatory system in terms of our fresh air and our water. Ultimately, we render this planet non-viable.
So really it couldn't matter more. I can't think of anything in fact, that's more important. It's a crude thing to say, but it's quite extraordinary that we could bring the natural world to its knees and ultimately ourselves, without breaking a single law. That was just madness. So clearly the law has to reflect this total dependence we have on the natural world.
We are just slashing away at life on earth and it's indisputable. So it always puzzles me that there's so much resistance to the kind of change that we need, given that the science and the evidence really couldn't be clearer. I wonder what more it would take to get people over the line and get them committed to doing what's necessary.
LC: And on that point, why do you feel that there's been such a slow political response to the scientific reality?
ZG: The two things. While I think while there is a consensus, climate change is a problem that needs tackling, it’s not necessarily seen as a top priority. And that means that sometimes you have a choice, you have to make a decision and you've got to balance things up. And the default until now has always been to make a choice in favour of a growth at any cost. And I think that's the bit that's beginning to change. And weirdly I think coronavirus is part of the reason for that. So, I mean, I've been talking to counterparts all around the world and I don't think I've spoken to a single politician who hasn't noted that we have a duty now to make sure that as we rebuild our economies, following this appalling pandemic that we actually do so in an intelligent way, that we take nature into account where we are living within natures means.
This is a new kind of discussion. I don't remember ever having these kinds of discussions before coronavirus. So I think something has shifted. I feel there's a stirring in global politics, a recognition that this is a moment for a change and maybe I'm being too optimistic, but it feels that way from the discussions that I'm having.
LC: So then in a nutshell, would you say you're of the position that government's role should be in more kind of rules and regulations that will then push business in the better direction. Kind of like Thomas Friedman's vision of the Green New Deal?
ZG: I think it's a cop-out to say that - clearly, obviously everyone does have a role. I mean, everyone makes decisions every day and those decisions have implications and consequences. But I think it's a cop out to point at consumers and people and say, you know, you've got to change the way you live otherwise the world is stuffed because it kind of completely overlooks the fact that most people aren't deliberately engaging in environmental destruction. When you go to a supermarket and you buy parsley and it's kind of wrapped up in a brick of plastic, that’s not consumer waste. No consumer wants that kind of waste. It’s producer waste.
So I think the onus should be on the producer to minimise and eliminate that waste. And how does that happen? Well, yes, a little bit of consumer pressure has an impact. It makes a difference, but ultimately it's about government setting the rules. I don't think governments are good at micromanaging, but I think they are good at creating the framework and the rules. And then business is a better place than to respond. So, you know, the more carbon becomes a financial liability, the more companies will do to eliminate carbon from their supply chains and their operations. So, yeah, government has huge power and money, laws, taxes, and international cooperation.
Governments can't do it all, but they can create a framework which would drive us rapidly in the right direction. The only thing I would say is there's a difference between being outside of government and being in government, clearly because when it comes to being in government, you've got to find the solution that is going to work for the biggest number of people and be as effective as possible.
So there's always a little bit on the one hand, on the other hand in government, and I don't think that's avoidable. But just in defense of this government, while I really do acknowledge and believe that the government's got a very, very long way to go as all governments do, I partly wish that the people could see and witness some of those kinds of cabinet committee meetings on the environment on climate change to recognise that there is so much bigger appetite for meaningful and radical action than I think anyone outside of government would imagine. There was a recognition of how difficult it is in getting to net zero by 2050. I think we’re the first country, we were the first to legislate for that, which is a big step, but actually making it happen is a really big deal. It's going to require some really tough decisions by all the departments of government and the whole of government is engaged right now in kind of really trying to figure out what that means, how are we going to do it?
And that will involve bringing people along with us, because the worst thing that can happen is the governments reach out for clumsy and deeply unpopular policies to tackle climate change or, or sort of harmonise our relationship with the natural world. Because if that happens, you're going to get a backlash. And the last thing we can afford I think is a backlash right now. I think people do want action. Everything I've seen, every school I've spoken to, every event I've been at, confirms my very strong view that people want governments around the world to get their heads together and really deal with this stuff.
But that, I don't think is something we should take for granted because if we extinguish that and I think we're in real trouble.
LC: Do you think then some activists are too radical with their demands? Like I know Extinction Rebellion wanted net zero by 2025.
ZG: Yeah. I mean, my only interest is that we get to the point where we're genuinely turning the trends and I don't care how we do that. We just have to do it. And I recognise the fear and the sense of urgency that is exuded by the Extinction Rebellion, protesters, Greta Thunburg and all the people who've been campaigning with her on Fridays. I completely recognise where and share that from a sense of urgency. I think it is an emergency. I don't think there's anything wrong in what they're saying about that.
The only thing I would caution is there are times when things that have been done by, for example, Extinction Rebellion have really pissed off a lot of people. And when you get in the way of people just living their lives, you don't win friends. You don't make allies. And right now this cannot be a niche movement of people who are living in a fairly small bubble. This, this has to be mainstream. There's a long way between what we need to do and where we are now. There's no doubt there's a big mismatch between action and what's needed, but the only way we're going to close that gap is by bringing as many people as possible on board.
So whenever actions are taken by protest groups, I would always have that in the back of my mind, what is going to win us friends, what's going to expand our coalition, our alliance, and what's going to minimise that and I'd avoid the latter like the plague, because we just can't afford that.
LC: I spoke with the Farhana Yamin, an environmental lawyer who has authored multiple UN reports, but in 2019, took to breaking the law to call attention to its limits.
Farhana Yamin: Thanks for having me on the podcast. Yeah. I became a lawyer back in 1991 when I qualified and I feel it was an age of huge amounts of optimism and trying to integrate environmental protection in the heart of economic decision-making. And we invented this concept called Sustainable Development. And we're armed with this concept, which we would enshrine into law. We were going to fix, you know, the planetary crisis, even as it was unfolding then.
So scientists have been warning us about the limits to growth, about the intensity of extraction of natural resources, polluting water, soils, chopping down forests for a very long time. So I felt like that time, the scientists were really being heard and that we were able to use their knowledge, their wisdom that they were giving us based on evidence to inform policy making. I really felt that that's what we were doing.
And in 1992 was the second major Earth Summit in Brazil, which I was fortunate enough to attend. And there was a huge number of international treaties that were being written, EU policy, EC as it was called then was progressing a pace and lots and lots of countries were writing their environmental legislation or beefing it up. So it was a very optimistic time. We have lawyers, economists, politicians listening.
We thought we were able to use expert knowledge and devise political solutions that would take care of things, you know, make stuff right. And prevent problems. 30 years later, we have not been able to use the law in the way that we thought. We have got huge numbers of treaties, many of which I've helped negotiate and participated in. We've got thousands of laws in training, environmental protection and conservation, but those have mainly been too weak and have been breached and damage has occurred in a way, which is on a scale that we didn't imagine and much faster than we imagined. And the earth is literally disintegrating in terms of the ecosystems before our eyes.
So it's a great source of sadness to me that my own personal journey, as a young lawyer aged sort of 24 to now age 55, is marked by huge success in terms of legal instruments, many of which I was part of, but they haven't done the job and that's the truth. They haven't done the job. We are in the middle of a sixth mass extinction. We are decimating wilderness at an alarming rate. Nature is sending us signals. The oceans are acidifying, you know, you and I are speaking, both of us are looking tearful, but that's the reality. And that's not a reality I thought I would be facing at this time.
So I feel very much the answer to your question is no, we can't just rely on the established machinery of law and the established machinery of lawmaking of norm making. We have to do something different, which has led me to become much more of an activist and not fear, you know, breaking the law because the system needs to be reset very fundamentally.
LC: And why do you feel like there is a sense of failure with those international agreements? Is it because there was too much compromise? Is it because of lobbying? Is it because the forces of capitalism and economics and the kind of power handles we have right now through politics are just too strong for the law to go up against? I don't know. I'm speculating. Why do you think that it hasn't been enough?
FY: I think all of those reasons, but I feel for me the most, I guess, haunting in terms of me feeling I didn't pay enough attention to it. And so sort of sadness and regret and anger in myself is the power of the corporations and the power of money and the power of lobbying. And I kind of feel, I naively thought politicians armed with scientific knowledge with experts, that we would get the right solutions then that we would act in the long-term interests of everyone.
We would act in the interests of the Earth. We would protect our children's interests and the fact that short-termism and the lobbying power and the inertia of the ‘business as usual’, especially the fossil fuel industry, especially the agribusiness industry, I think was bigger, far bigger than me armed with pen in hand and expert knowledge and with legal concepts.
So I feel, we sort of saw climate change and biodiversity as a sort of set of legal, technical arguments and scientific arguments to be won. And actually we didn't see them as a political and a power problem that some corporations, some countries have far more power. And they're not going to just hand it over or say, yeah, the game's up.
And I've seen so many Mark Carnies, who whilst they were in power, when he was actually at the head of the Bank of England, didn't do enough. So when they leave, they suddenly become far more radical and suddenly kind of proselytise about how urgent climate action is. But when once they actually had their jobs, they didn't do enough. And I've seen this repeated over 30 years. Leaders are so much more eloquent and talk about far more radical things when they're ex-leaders than when they're leaders.
LC: And then tell me a little bit about your journey into activism and why you made that decision to break the law?
FY: Yeah, I guess partly I've returned to activism. I feel I put it aside when I became a professional young lawyer and breaking the law was then sort of obviously inconsistent with being a lawyer. You know, I've put a lot of faith in my profession and being able to enact change through law and through, you know, devising new laws. So when I was 15 and 16, I was going to marches and I think I put all of that on hold.
And my return to it has come from, you know, seeing the failure, I guess, or the limits of that more professional, expert approach. And my return to it has come because I am a mother and I sense danger. And I feel it's time for me to put my body, my reputation, my financial assets, which I have, like I've, you know, accumulated all this stuff on the line and to support all of the people who have been fighting in a more dangerous way than I have.
I feel privileged to have all of this capital, you know, social, reputational, financial capital. I feel like all of that needs to be thrown at the problem now. And I feel like we need to make people sit up and listen.
LC: What was the moment in your mind that that shift happened, that you decided to risk getting arrested, which you know, and then you got arrested. Can you talk me through that moment?
FY: Yeah. So the moment it was really, I feel the publication by the IPCC, which is the UN body for climate science. And they published a report in October 2018 on the implications of the earth warming to a 1.5 degree limit. You know, versus I guess the two degree limit. And that report had taken essentially a decade to come out because I was part of the negotiations in 2009, where its small islands and vulnerable countries had been fighting, including with the president of the Maldives who I was working with for 1.5 degree limit to be enshrined as the safety threshold. This is in 2009. So it took almost 10 years for that report to officially come out and inform the climate process.
The report basically paints an absolutely devastating picture of existing vulnerabilities and says, you know, there's a massive difference between aiming for a two degree rise in temperature, which is the limit enshrined in Paris and a 1.5, which is much, much safer for the vast majority of the world's ecosystem, for the vast majority of the world's most vulnerable countries and communities, farmers, everywhere else.
So this was correct, like it was right that the small islands and many of the vulnerable countries were arguing for this much safer limit for 10 years. The trigger for my committing to getting arrested and through nonviolent direct action was I saw that Extinction Rebellion had staged a rebellion in parliament and people had got arrested. I wasn't there, but I knew about it and I felt that's the right response to this report. The response to this report is not to have another press briefing, it’s not to have another petition. This is the alarm bells. If they're not ringing now, what else are we waiting for?
As I said, I knew the history of that report and had negotiated for small islands to have the 1.5 limit recognised. And it is recognised in Paris. So again, it took three years from the Paris agreement, which says we should strive towards a 1.5 limit for the report to come out. And I felt like, okay, now's the time to throw everything, you know, all hands on deck and let's throw everything at the problem. We don't have another 10 years to wait. The IPCC reports says we've got roughly 10 years, this is in 2018, to bend the emissions curves and to change our societies profoundly. Every decision, every day counts.
LC: And you got arrested. Were you worried about going to jail? Were you worried about the implications of that?
FY: So I got arrested on the 16th of April and I was arrested outside Shell for trying to glue myself in fact to the doors, but I didn't quite make it as far as the doors, for criminal damage to Shell. And I wanted to honour the work of Polly Higgins and alert people to ecoside, you know, which is happening. It's happened for hundreds of years, but it's happening at an exponential rate and in full knowledge, you know, in daylight right now.
Most of the big gains that we have in terms of human rights and in terms of political freedoms have come from movements where getting arrested, going to jail, was actually a key part, whether voluntarily chosen or involuntarily, you know, chosen. Yeah. So whether it's the suffragettes, the Charters, the Trade Union movement, the fight against racism, Apartheid, the fight for social justice has always been accompanied by a struggle with power. And power does not give itself up willingly and sadly people have to sometimes go to prison or are killed or maimed or have to risk their reputations.
And I think it was fanciful for the climate movement to think otherwise that's what I think now. It was really arrogant maybe or crazy. Like why did we think that the most powerful companies and these vested interests would just listen to a bunch of reports and scientists? You know, why did we think we didn't need ordinary people to give up and risk more? I'm totally convinced that power will not just give itself up and that we will need to be braver for many years to come.
LC: Caroline Lucas has been the UK’s only green member of parliament for 10 years, following her work as a member of the European parliament. Caroline told me about her journey, policy she's hopeful for and why she feels the current iteration of our democracy is in many ways, holding us back.
Caroline Lucas: So, I guess I've spent my life trying to work out where you need to be best placed to make change happen. That's the big question to me. And yes, the reason that I wanted to be an MP finally, was exactly because I want change to happen when it comes to environment and sustainability and our relationship with our very beleaguered planet, but it is difficult to work out where you can have the most influence. I've spent 10 years working with a development NGO. I spent 10 years in the European parliament. I've now had 10 years in Westminster and trying to answer the question where does power lie, I think is a really Interesting one. And that's why even as an MP, for example, I found myself taking peaceful direct action at Baulkham against fracking, was arrested, had a week long trial, you know, and you could argue in one way that actually the profile that I achieved through doing that, part of that profile was because I was an MP, you know, has it had more impact on, on the fracking debate than any number of debates or written questions or early day motions that I put down at Westminster.
It's important to have people on the inside of these institutions who can try to fight the battles inside, but that's not to say that you don't also need the people on the outside who are creating the political space, who are putting on the political pressure, that would mean that other politicians will move. So in a sense, I think you do need that kind of coordinated pincer action.
LC: As a Green Party MP you're sort of working outside the system as well as inside the system, at the same time. I know in the past, you've tried to do progressive alliances between different UK parties. Why did you do that? And also have you ever doubted your decision to be in the green party, as opposed to being in one of the more mainstream parties.
CL: You do have to think about, well, how do we get more Greens elected? How do we get these views more widely known and promoted in our political system? So one of the reasons for trying to explore the idea of progressive alliances was partly to try to recognise that broadly on the centre left of British politics, there are more parties and therefore the votes get split between us and therefore time and again, when we all stand against one another, the Conservatives come through the middle and win, and that doesn't represent the true views of people in that constituency.
So we wanted to see whether it be possible to find ways of working together at elections, so that as long as there were some absolutely core shared objectives on climate, on inequality on housing, let’s say, that we could then have some arrangements between those opposition parties. We need to have a really frank discussion I think, about how we make sure that our voting system doesn't lock us into a very right wing agenda, which I don't think the evidence suggests is actually what the majority of the people in this country want.
LC: If you could wave a magic wand and have a few policies in place in the next few years, what would you see happen?
CL: The Climate and Ecology Emergency Bill. It's a bill that's been worked on by a number of scientists and lawyers and academics and campaigners. Essentially this bill would update and close the gaps in our existing climate legislation. So instead of talking about net zero by 2050, which is far too late, it would talk about the imperative of staying below 1.5 degrees, that Paris threshold. It would ensure that our consumption emissions are also incorporated in the calculations because right now, one of the reasons that the government can give the impression that we're doing so well at getting our emissions down is because we've outsourced them to countries like China. Much of our manufacturing now happens in places like China.
I think we need a change in our electoral system. And I appreciate that might sound like a slight diversion, but over and over again, you have governments with a majority in terms of the number of seats, but only a minority in the number of the votes that they got. And we had over a million people voting green a couple of years ago in the election, and just one MP, you know. In order to have a political chamber that better represents what people want, we need a fair voting system.
We can start by replacing the house of Lords within the elected upper chamber. It's important to bring power away from the centre and back to the local level. And things like the flourishing of citizens assemblies right now, I think people relish the idea that they can make a difference. And I think one of the most toxic ideas ever out there was the idea that individuals can't make a difference. They can, and we do, and working together, we can do anything if we really put our minds to it.
LC: Can you tell me a little bit more about the citizens assembly that was recently held on how to reach net zero carbon emissions.
CL: Yes. So this citizen's assembly was put together by six parliamentary select committees who came together to say, we want to know what the public think about how we should make the transition to a zero carbon economy and society. And my criticism, I guess to the extent that there is one, will be that the whole assembly was based on the premise of the government policy of net zero by 2050. And many of us would say that that's the wrong target.
But nonetheless, what happened was that letters went out to a random group of people. I think it's around 110. Properly represented Britain, both in terms of geography and ethnicity and age and region. They had a huge input from independent scientists and others giving them information. And then they were facilitated to come up with proposals on a whole range of issues from transport to housing to the way that we manage our land and agriculture.
And I think what was interesting about the results was they were far bolder and more ambitious than I think government would have expected. For example, when it came to aviation, one of the fastest growing sources of greenhouse gas emissions, this nationally representative citizens assembly came up with the idea of a frequent flyer levy. They suggested things like free buses. They suggested things like a ban on carbon-intensive products.
So I think what it does in a sense is to give government some political cover. It gives them a really clear, popular mandate to be far bolder when it comes to the measures that we need to see in order to try to avoid the worst of the climate crisis.
LC: That makes me think of the impact of lobbying because probably the majority of the people in this country would support taxes on frequent flying because the majority of people in this country aren't flying frequently. Do you think the influence of power and money does distort the government's ability to listen to the people?
CL: I think that the power of lobbying is immense and it has an entirely toxic impact on our politics. And I think it's something we need to do far more, in terms of having laws around the regulation of lobbying and the transparency of lobbying and so forth. I do come back to the realisation, I think, that power does remain with people because politicians sadly won't act fast enough unless they feel real public pressure to do so.
LC: So how do we create public pressure? Alongside the rise in documentaries like those made by David Attenborough there has been a rise of environmental protest movements, engaging in civil disobedience to drive awareness. For example, the Fridays for the Future movement started by Gretta Thunberg in 2018, has seen millions of children around the world, strike school on Fridays in protest for the climate.
On the 31st of October, 2018, whilst kids were trick-or-treating, more than a thousand people took to London's parliament square to see the environmental movement Extinction Rebellion's declaration of rebellion against the UK government. Thunberg, Caroline Lucas and George Monbiot read speeches, standing amongst the statues of Millicent Fawcett, Gandhi and Nelson Mandela, who all in their time partook in civil disobedience.
I spoke to one of the co-founders of Extinction Rebellion, nicknamed XR, Dr. Gail Bradbrook, at the end of their most recent rebellion in the UK, in which they blocked access to three printing presses owned by Rupert Murdoch.
Tell me a little bit about the, kind of the theories behind Extinction Rebellion's process and why you founded it and what the theoretical underpinnings are.
Dr. Gail Bradbrook: Yeah. So there's a body of knowledge around movement and social movements that probably started being elaborated by Gene Sharp, who’s often seen as the father of civil resistance. And it's based in the ideal that obviously, you know, Gandhi before hand and Martin Luther King, who learned from Gandhi and so on. So there's a history, but in terms of academic study, there's a body of knowledge there, but some of the things are that you have to do disruptive actions and you have to do things that enable you to get into the public consciousness with the issue that you're talking about.
People don't need to like what you're doing, they need to be talking about the issue and you set things up called Dilemma Actions. So however the State chooses to respond, you set it up so that you win. So that, for example, if you go to a bank and we often use chalk, by the way, you spray on the bank a slogan on the window that you intend to wash off later. I mean, do they let you stand there for a day with your protest that was quite in your face. It’s going to get in the papers or do they come and arrest you, which is going to get in the papers. And you bring love and peaceful mischief to what you're doing. You try to bring in humour and meaning and sacrifice in the sense of people willing to be arrested if that's what it takes. In many cases, they know if they do this thing that's going to happen.
And I think the ripples of that when that person goes back home and they’re like wow, what happened to Lily? She’s done that, she lost the plot! And then they can say I did it for these reasons and it means more. The consciousness of the ecological crisis was vastly increased. It's not definitely just down to us, of course, Fridays for the Future, the films of David Attenborough, the IPCC reports. And so on, you know, your own work Lily. I mean, there's so many people add into that.
And I think that we have helped by bringing a disruptive element. Looking in any history books about the rights and freedoms that you have and there will have been somebody, some group, the Levellers, the Diggers, the Tolpuddle Martyrs, in this country, you know, those that did mass trespass, the Suffragettes, the Charters, they all did some form of civil disobedience.
LC: Yeah, your action actually, of smashing a window reminds me of the Suffragettes because I know smashing windows was a key part of their strategy. They didn't want to hurt anyone, but they wanted to cause damage to get arrested, to be disruptive.
DGB: I didn't actually smash it. I had like this little hammer..
LC: I did see the video.
DGB: It was like people were on Twitter going we need to teach her to use a hammer properly. And I sat on the window ledge high up for some time, which would give the people in the building time to respond and make that safe. You know, I mean, we're absolutely a peaceful movement. Non-violence is baked into our principles and values and none of us would wish to see anybody harmed as a result of the actions that were taken.
People are already dying in this country though, of air pollution, and caused by the Department for Transports policies. So, you know, I'm going to be tried as a criminal and the British government's been found guilty three times of breaking air pollution limits, and who's gone to jail for that?
So, you know what you're doing it's another one of those Dilemma Actions really. Are you going to jail me? It's a peaceful protester in a tradition that’s seen women get the vote in this country, the Charters and the men, or you're going to let me off and therefore, you know, potentially look like you're encouraging this behaviour.
It's the system doesn’t know how to respond. And what it needs to do is wrestle with the law and the lack of effective law in this country to protect life on Earth. That's really, the law is a problem in itself. What's wrong with the legal system, that surely the highest purpose of the law is to protect life on Earth. But it's literally unable to do that. For several reasons there's problems in the law. But you know, one is that there is no international law of ecoside, the law that Polly Higgins was working on. Her work carries on to say that mass damage and destruction of the environment is a form of crime against peace.
LC: Do you feel that the strategies of Extinction Rebellion it working?
DGB: It’s hard to fully know. Our main purpose is active civil disobedience. We did an action for example at 55 Tufton Street, which is the home of many so-called think tanks that have been spewing out climate denial and other mechanisms to prop up and support vested interests in business as usual. We worked alongside Animal Rebellion who were pointing out the activities of, for example, Barclays bank, in funding, industrial mass scale animal agriculture that's destroying so much of life on Earth.
And obviously we took on the idea of the freedom of the press in the UK. What's happened is that I would say we've poked the beast in the eye or tickled the nose of the tiger. And it is naturally roaring. Ideally you'd have great journalism, people talking about the crisis and you wouldn’t have to have a social movement, pushing it into the faces of everybody. That’s what we want really. In the absence of that, you escalate, you raise the bar and you get a pushback. And of course, it's in two ways. One is this ridiculous concept of calling us organised criminals, talking about reclassifying us and the other is that the right wing press are attacking us massively at the minute. They’re trying to dig dirt on us and doing hit pieces and take everything you read with a massive handful of salt, by the way. People may not agree with every tactic, but when you try to reclassify, you know, a bunch of grandparents, lawyers, doctors, scientists, breastfeeding mothers, and so on as organised criminals who are talking about the biggest threat to humanity, then as you and and others did was to sign a letter to say, look, this is not okay. It's not acceptable in a democracy.
You know, in my view, in the view of many in XR, we don't have a functional democracy. Functional democracy would not allow us to be setting up the future of our children to be like the collapse of the food systems. We must have a grownup conversation about the political economy. This is not about coming out pro this system or anti that system. My own personal view is this, I think the system needs upcycling, take the best of it and move it forward so it's not destroying life on Earth. And in that way, we want a Global Citizens Assembly, you know, to ask this biggest question, why are we doing this to ourselves and what change is needed?
And of course, you've got fantastic examples of changes that can happen. You know, the de-growth agenda of Jason Hickel’s new book or Project Draw Down, or, you know, localism, doughnut economics. We don't lack ideas, we lack political will and you create political will through civil disobedience.
LC: You were arrested in the last rebellion, right? Is that correct? And when does your trial happen?
DGB: At the end of October for criminal damage. I broke one pane of glass at the Department for Transport.
LC: How are you feeling about the trial?
DGB: On a sort of, I guess, to use this language, spiritual level, I'm at peace with whatever happens. I have two children and I don’t want to be away from them, but also, it’s a deal that I made with myself that I'm willing to take risks and do what I think is necessary.
LC: Why do you make that decision? Because that is quite a huge risk, right? To potentially be away from your children.
DGB: The sentencing guidelines are six months to a year. I very much doubt it would be that long for various reasons. It's a bit foolish to lock somebody up and have them take up space in the prison system who's a peaceful protestor. And the last thing the system should do is make a martyr out of someone. Nevertheless, it is a risk. And the reason I would take such a risk is that my children have such a risky future, a future filled with horrors, you know, for their mum to spend a few months away, and they've got a great dad and so on, I feel it’s an honourable and justifiable thing to do, but not to be done lightly.
LC: Has anyone been tried by jury yet?
DGB: So Roger Hammerman and his colleague David were tried for actions that were part of the movement Rising Up that we built before the Extinction Rebellion came out. So that went to trial by jury. If you self-represent, you have sometimes more of a chance to say why you did something. There is a legal defence called necessity, or duress of circumstances that would be used in the case of, if you went past your neighbour's house and the house was on fire, you might smash a window to get into the house right. And what if it wasn't really on fire and you made a mistake and they said you've done criminal damage. You'd be like hang about, I thought your house was on fire and I was trying to keep your children safe. Our house is literally on fire at the minute in the world and I want to keep our children safe. I broke one window.
LC: Whatever you make of extinction rebellions tactics, if you swallow the science, it's hard not to sympathise with the level of desperation that many concerned citizens feel. And it is interesting that some of the people breaking the law over this issue are the law makers themselves, Caroline Lucas, and Farhana Yamin amongst them.
That said Extinction Rebellion are not without criticism. Many people find their tactics divisive and alienating and point out that taking time to protest and risking arrest are in many ways risks born of privilege. Yet if their goal is not to be liked, but to generate conversation, they seem to have been effective and their three demands: tell the truth, net zero carbon emissions and citizens' assemblies have all been partially met in the UK.
So how do we transform our system? Everyone I interviewed in this episode is fundamentally on the same team. All of them believe that the climate crisis and biodiversity crisis are real and terrifying threats to life as we know it. Everyone wants a version of system change. Yet they have chosen different pathways to create change, whether making laws, breaking laws, advocating civil disobedience or advocating community action. Is there a right way or wrong way, a better or worse way, or do we need all of these actors to push in different directions against and within the system so that we can upcycle it into a healthier version of itself that still exists in many years to come?
You can hear more from Caroline Lucas, Farhana Yamin and Gail Bradbrook and learn more about the work of protesters and politicians around the world in my book, Who Cares Wins, which is out now in audio book, ebook, and hardback.
In the next episode of this podcast, we'll dig deeper into these issues to explore how our media and social media is impacting on our democracy.