By Matthew Green
LONDON, Feb 12 (Reuters) - Activist group Extinction
Rebellion plans to send mosquito-like swarms of protesters to
disrupt financial, accountancy and media firms in London this
year to mobilise broader popular support for transformative
action against climate change.
The goal is to spark a worldwide conversation over how to
shift to a low-carbon society in time to avert the most
catastrophic impacts, said Gail Bradbrook, a co-founder of the
movement, who holds a PhD in molecular biophysics.
"We'll be like sets of mosquitoes coming into London — the
aim is to disrupt the system, not the public," Bradbrook told
Reuters ahead of the publication of an Extinction Rebellion
strategy document https://rebellion.earth/wp/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/XRUK-Strategy-Document-2020.pdf
on Wednesday.
Extinction Rebellion, in common with a "new economics"
movement of economists, academics and scientists, argues that a
relentless focus on ever-faster economic growth is pushing the
world's ecosystems to breaking point.
"The economic system is acting like a cancer on humanity,"
Bradbrook said. "The regulatory system, the accountants, the
legal firms support the metastasizing of this cancer."
Banks such as Barclays, a major financier of oil
and gas projects, accountants such as PricewaterhouseCoopers,
and media companies such as News Corp could be among
companies Extinction Rebellion would disrupt in a "rolling" wave
of actions starting on May 23, Bradbrook said.
"We can't wait for the Davos set to do this for us, because
they've got too much skin in the game," she said.
On Monday, Extinction Rebellion activists invaded asset
manager BlackRock's Paris offices, the latest in a
series of protests in London, New York and other centres urging
investors to stop financing fossil fuels.
After launching in late 2018, Extinction Rebellion has
emerged as a highly visible force in a growing global climate
movement, staging numerous colourful acts of civil disobedience.
But the decentralised network has triggered a backlash among
some commentators in Britain, who say its disruptive tactics
stretch the police and inconvenience commuters.
Although noted for stunts such as dragging a pink boat into
Oxford Circus or sending nude protesters into parliament, the
movement is also piloting new forms of participatory
decision-making.
Extinction Rebellion says it has scant faith in a U.N.
summit due to take place in Glasgow in November to shore up a
climate agreement brokered in Paris in 2015.
Bradbrook is more focused on plans to convene a global
"Citizens Assembly" to model the kind of democratic,
deliberative process she believes will ultimately be needed to
agree bold action on carbon emissions.
"Every single person now who's alive has to realise the
agency they've got," she said. "We're doing our best to create
something new."
(Reporting by Matthew Green, editing by Estelle Shirbon)