{"id":7776,"date":"2020-09-23T07:05:41","date_gmt":"2020-09-23T07:05:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=7776"},"modified":"2020-09-23T07:05:41","modified_gmt":"2020-09-23T07:05:41","slug":"the-xr-revolution-consumes-itself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2020\/09\/23\/the-xr-revolution-consumes-itself\/","title":{"rendered":"The XR revolution consumes itself"},"content":{"rendered":"

I wrote back in early September<\/a> about Extinction Rebellion's growing troubles as the movement (or was it only a moment?) suffered from the inevitable internal wrangling as the cadres sought to claim the moral high ground for their own brand of idealism. \u00a0As I've little time for this bunch of self-indulgent bourgeois hippies, I'm happy to say that this internal strife continues. \u00a0Worse, perhaps, for an outfit that prided itself as epitomising green virtue, are the tales of bullying against staff whose views were not pure enough, accounts of people not being paid, and internal personality cults. \u00a0If you've been casting an eye over would be revolutionary movements as long as I have none of it comes as a surprise. \u00a0I note that an erstwhile leaders has just been bailed after being on remand in Pentonville where he had had to share his cell with cockroaches and mice and endure a vegan diet that was apparently\u00a0unbalanced. \u00a0You might tell that I'm struggling to dredge up much by way of empathy.<\/p>\n

Worse, perhaps, from XR's point of view, one of their flagship policies has come to grief. \u00a0That's to say, it has given rise to sensible outcomes. \u00a0XR liked the idea of a citizens assembly because it felt that the random public would agree with them about, say, wrecking the economy in order to reduce carbon emissions. \u00a0Not so, it seems. \u00a0After meeting over six weekends, listening to climate and energy specialists and discussing the issues, the assembly\u00a0report\u00a0<\/a>emerged a couple of weeks ago.<\/p>\n

Unsurprisingly \u2013 unless you're an XR groupie \u2013 its proposals were not only sensible, but many were already national policy. \u00a0For example, a ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars by between 2030 \/ 2035, and financial incentives to switch to EV. \u00a0 It\u00a0said, surely sensibly, that the switch must ensure that travel is \"accessible and affordable to all sections of society\", which might be a tall order. \u00a0It suggested a frequent flyer tax and didn't like burning wood in power stations. \u00a0I'd have suggested both of these had I been in the 108 people in the consultation.<\/p>\n

XR has cried foul, of course claiming that the assembly was rigged; but, like thwarted children everywhere, they would say that, wouldn't they?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I wrote back in early September about Extinction Rebellion's growing troubles as the movement (or was it only a moment?) suffered from the inevitable internal wrangling as the cadres sought to claim the moral high ground for their own brand...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7776"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7776\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}