Extinction Rebellion, Or, The Impotence of Being Earnest
Sensible sounding folk can still fall prey to group think
By Richard Tren, TES Contributor
There is something utterly delightful about a warm spring day in England, perhaps because they are so rare. With the blossoms out and the sun shining, the week around Easter was almost too perfect, except, that is, if you were in London and trying to do anything constructive.
Instead of enjoying the good weather, Extinction Rebellion, a radical climate activist group that demands net zero carbon emissions by 2025, took to the streets. By blocking Waterloo Bridge, Oxford Circus, and other parts of the city the activists effectively shut down the city causing considerable frustration and cost to its residents. Their actions, far from earning them opprobrium, resulted in a meeting with cabinet members, including the UK’s environment secretary. If the UK government really cares about the environment and human health, it should roundly reject Extinction Rebellion’s demands and adopt the exact opposite policies.
Based on the news coverage of protests, most of the activists who chained themselves to railings, glued themselves to the streets, were well-spoken, educated, and middle class. In other words, these were people who one might think would have some perspective and ability to understand reasoned arguments. You would be wrong, however. Extinction Rebellion’s demands would require the complete restructuring of the global economy and a move away from the liberal economic order that has resulted in the greatest improvement in welfare in human history. As such, these demands are as unreasonable and unattainable as the Green New Deal pushed by U.S. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. When asked to justify the protests by a BBC journalist, one activist who was glued to the tarmac, responded that she had morality on her side. Well then, how convenient.
As others pointed out in the UK media, if these protestors really had the courage of their moral convictions, they wouldn’t be blocking the major commuter arteries of London, but would gluing themselves to the streets of Beijing and Delhi. After all, for years the UK has been working hard to reduce its carbon footprint, at great cost to British households and commuters. It is China and India primarily that are driving the rise in CO2 emissions. Somehow, I think the moral courage of your average Extinction Rebellion activist, so evident when facing down a polite London Bobby, would melt away at the sight of the Chinese People’s Armed Police.
Surprisingly, South Africa has a small band of Extinction Rebellion activists. I say surprisingly because that country is already de-carbonizing its energy production, albeit inadvertently.
South Africa’s state-owned monopoly electricity provider, Eskom, was once effective and reliable and had excess capacity, to the point that it could have powered most of southern Africa. Under the early years of the ANC’s rule, which began in 1994, Eskom continued to produce electricity, almost all of it from coal-fired power plants, while increasing supply to millions of South Africans that previously had no electricity. As it tried to expand electricity coverage, the ANC could have invested in the grid and modernized power plants. Instead it did the exact opposite. Not only did Eskom neglect much needed maintenance, the ANC awarded contracts to supply coal based on race, or more importantly affiliation with the ruling party, rather than competence or ability to deliver. The result has been massive shortages of coal and often the supply of sub-standard coal, when it is delivered at all.
As a consequence of this corruption and mismanagement, South Africa has been suffering from rolling black outs for months. The “load shedding” as Eskom dubs the power cuts, result in hours on end of no electricity, often during the work day. As South Africa has become less economically free over the years, its economic growth has been lackluster, to say the least. The economic cost of the power outages on top of its drift towards socialism is estimated to be between $150 million and $300 million per day. With unemployment in the formal economy at around 25 percent, these are costs the economy simply cannot bear. While these costs have been caused by bad governance, they provide a glimpse of what the future will be like when power generation depends on unreliable and expensive sources, like wind and solar.
A life without reliable, cheap power is unpleasant, to say the least. According to the International Energy Agency, over 1.1 billion people, mostly living in sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Asia, have no access to electricity. Like those in South Africa who are now forced to rely on alternatives, they mostly have to burn wood or even dung indoors. Even the dirtiest coal-fired power plant would be a step up from these forms of power that result in acute respiratory illnesses among many other health problems.
Those enamored by Extinction Rebellion’s cause should look toward South Africa for a sense of where its policies will lead. With more state direction, less economic freedom, and less reliable forms of power, the future will be one that is poorer, dirtier, less healthy, and less safe.
Alternatively, climate activists could look toward the United States, where innovation and free markets have driven the shale gas revolution. The result has been economic growth and prosperity, along with steadily declining CO2 emissions, which is presumably something they would approve of.
Recently Michael Gove, the UK’s environment secretary, gave a spectacular speech in the House of Commons, taking on Jeremy Corby, the anti-Semitic socialist who leads the Labour Party. Let’s hope Gove has the same moral convictions when he meets with Extinction Rebellion and denies them the right to assume the moral high ground and explains just how depraved and destructive their actions are.