An open letter to journalist, writer, and climate activist Chloe Adams, whose article “I’m an Extinction Rebellion protester and I’ll be disrupting your work commute. Here’s why” was published by ABC on Tuesday.
Dear Chloe,
Thank you for sharing that heartfelt piece with us. It was most, um, interesting. Here’s why.
I too worry about the climate, particularly that overpowering smugness and self-righteousness in the air of late. I find that atmosphere insufferable. It is the zealotry of those who believe they are ordained with a divine purpose, that being to save mankind from self-destruction. When I read your declaration “It is falling to ordinary people like me now to tell the truth of our climate emergency,” I understood exactly where you are coming from, even if you do not.
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You say XR (what an edgy abbreviation) is composed of “ordinary” people, something you repeatedly stress in this piece. I assume you mean those adults who glue themselves to the road, chain themselves to rail tracks, buzz about in giant bee costumes, ponce about in public, do a nude parade, sob hysterically, or dress up like they’ve just been transported from JRR Tolkien’s Middle-earth. When I saw those flamboyant “Red Rebels”, which I mistook for an Oxford Street version of Emperor Palpatine’s Imperial Guards, I thought “Wow, these are ordinary people like me.”
#RedRebels at Potsdamer Platz #BerlinBlockieren pic.twitter.com/ujpt57qrsP
— Extinction Rebellion Deutschland (@ExtinctionR_DE) October 7, 2019
Given you emphasise your ordinariness as part of your activism, I am perplexed why you would lament, saying, “Inevitably these protesters, myself included, will be reduced by some news media to just another bunch of climate activists. I want to tell you though, that term ‘climate activist’, whilst true, is limiting.” How so? “It certainly doesn’t capture the truth of who I am or why I joined XR,” you add. “It doesn’t tell you that I am a mother of two small children. Or that I have lived a law-abiding life.” Uh-huh.
And then you continue “You wouldn’t know for instance, that I am haunted by one image: the moment my children are old enough to understand the gravity of the climate crisis, and they look me in the eye and ask, ‘but what did you do Mummy?’” Yes, we get it. You are a devoted and truly wonderful mother. Forgive me though if I sound like a complete bastard when I say the quickest way to lose people in a debate is to resort to these irrelevant and syrupy platitudes. Not only do they come across as self-serving, they also give the impression you are trying to bolster a weak argument.
Only last month climate activist Tim Flannery tried a similar tactic, saying that the actions of the so-called denialists were “predatory”. He even went as far to proclaim “I have come to understand they are threatening my children’s wellbeing as much as anyone who might seek to harm a child.” How edifying. I also note you describe him as one “of the greatest minds in the climate and environmental space”. Seeing you are a journalist, I would have expected you to know he is not even a climate scientist, but then again activism and journalism make for an insurmountable conflict of interest.
It may surprise you, Chloe, or should I say Chloe-mother-of-two-small-children, but nearly all of those people you and your fellow demonstrators obstruct in the name of civil disobedience also love their kids, as well as worry about their future. Contrary to what you may think, they are not ignorant or dismissive about climate change. In fact, some of them are well-informed about the challenges. For instance, they would probably ask how you propose to keep the economy going if we suddenly put an end to our oil, coal, and gas projects, and what effect that abandonment would have on essentials such as health services, transport, education, and welfare, just to name a few.
They may also ask you how much the average temperature would fall if Australia reduced its 1.3 per cent of global carbon dioxide emissions to zero. I encourage you to answer, for in the absence of any explanation they may infer XR is a merely a pseudo-religion or cult that insists on virtue through making pointless gestures at great cost. And if you are so concerned about reducing emissions, you might also tell us why we never see your lot demonstrating outside the Chinese embassy. You do know that country is the world’s biggest emitter I take it?
Less you believe I am too critical, I think you made a good point when you said that “climate activist” does not fully define you or by extension your fellow XR members. For example, in your article there is an accompanying photo of activists with the banner “Socialist Rebellion — Burn Borders Not Coal”. One of XR’s demands is that Australia “Dismantle colonial systems of oppression: decolonise and replace oppressive government structures with systems of self-management & true participatory democracy.”
Stuart Basden, one of XR’s co-founders, freely admits that “XR isn’t about the climate”. He denounces concepts such as “heteronormativity”, “class hierarchy” and “patriarchy”. He also calls for white people to pay reparations to black Americans descended from slaves. “It’s a call to the XR community to never say we’re a climate movement,” he writes. “Because we’re not. We’re a Rebellion.”
Or this from Gail Bradbrook, another of XR’s co-founders: “For me this is part of reweaving the human family back together again, it’s part of dealing with systemic racism, white supremacy and the wounds of patriarchy that want to separate us, make us feel powerless …” It sounds like XR is more concerned with my rehabilitation than it is the earth’s. And yet you wear a “Tell the Truth” badge and maintain “it is this ordinariness that is perhaps the most compelling aspect of Extinction Rebellion.” This movement is about as ordinary and mainstream as a verdant Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.
Stopping climate change enables us to also solve “systemic racism, white supremacy, and the wounds of the patriarchyâ€.
— Marcus Boo 🎃👻🎃 (@AStrongerOZ) October 8, 2019
Yep. Straight from the mouth of @ExtinctionR’s co founder, Gail Bradbook.
pic.twitter.com/OJ6FELPl5a
Last January you wrote in the Sydney Morning Herald “I know families who have even fled the city and are raising their children in the wild, convinced by civilisation’s imminent collapse and determined to give their offspring a head start.” If a friend of mine did this, my first thought would be to get him professional help. Instead you wrote “No matter what you make of their choices, these are educated people who want the best for their kids.” Presumably it never occurred to you that educated people are also capable of losing their you-know-what in a big way.
You need to listen to yourself. You seriously heed the words of friends and acquaintances who utter paranoid inanities such as:
• “I literally wake up every morning and check my phone wondering if there will be an alert saying a nuclear bomb was detonated.”
• “We have industrial quantities of dried carbs and tinned food in our pantry at the moment.”
• “I feel like world news is directly affecting my mental health.”
• “I looked into buying gold and I started reading prepper material.”
• “I just wish I knew whether to make contributions into my super.”
Yet when you write of your transition to activist you state “I lose sleep at night, wrestling with the discomfort of what I am doing. Will I lose friends?” I am confused. If anything, it sounds like your alarmist friends will applaud what you are doing. So why the big deal about fretting over potentially losing them — or is this just more hype and self-pity porn?
I know you do not welcome my saying this, Chloe-who-has-lived-a-law-abiding-life, but I think you would be far better off reinventing yourself as Chloe-who-has-an-entirely-new-set-of-friends, ones that are “ordinary” in the sense of being normal and well-adjusted. It may even make you happy or at the very least less miserable. It certainly is far preferable to playing planetary saviour by deliberately obstructing innocent strangers for hours on end.
Lastly, we all know the teenage activist Greta Thunberg has declared that “the world is waking up”. You write effusively of this “And I believe, with that waking up comes personal responsibility.” Like that 16-year-old girl, you have conflated waking up to oneself with wokeness, even though the two could not be further apart in meaning. As for personal responsibility, your take on that phrase is very different from mine.
Yours sincerely, an ordinary person.
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