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Letzte Generation Austria stages a messy sit in at Vienna Airport for Oil Kills.
This issue: XR Vaal vs Coal Mines | France’s Water War part II | Oil Kills
Dear rebel,
Renown climate scientist Johan Rockström has given an updated assessment of our planet, and his verdict is terrifying. The Earth is heating quicker than scientists expected, the planetary systems that absorb heat are already showing signs of overwhelm, and irreversible cataclysmic tipping points are on our doorstep.
Rockström ends on a note of positivity (this is a TED talk) by affirming that the majority of citizens across the world care about the planet and want solutions to this crisis, and those solutions are available - we just have to use them.
Except we don’t. We trundle on towards the abyss, seemingly uninterested in cheaper green energy and circular economies. While Rockström doesn’t mention this paradox, let alone explain it, he does show the reason for it on a slide…
Rockström shows this slide but doesn’t discuss it. We’re top of the list. Photo: TED
To avert disaster, we need to see the fastest economic transition in history. But capitalism has created vast inequality, meaning too much power is in the hands of a small elite that would rather sustain their privileges under the current economy than sustain life under a new one.
So instead of political progress we get COP, instead of technological disruption we get carbon capture and AI, and instead of market forces we get fossil fuel subsidies of more than $7tn globally.
Which just leaves us, mass movements. We are the one remaining driver of economic transition that this elite hasn’t extinguished - though they are certainly trying, as the recent 5-year imprisonment of an XR co-founder demonstrates.
French police fire so many tear gas grenades at peaceful protesters, they set fire to fields… again.
In this issue, we show how activists are pushing against the ecocidal confines of capitalism. In Action Highlights we report on the South African rebels who are refusing to have more dirty coal mines on their doorstep, despite the promise of new jobs, and we investigate how an alliance of activists in France are using genius tactics to disrupt the privatisation of their water.
For Solidarity Corner we celebrate Oil Kills, an exciting new global collective that includes XR groups, and has disrupted airports around the world in an effort to get governments to sign a fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty.
Shortly after Rockström’s speech, Roger Hallam, the imprisoned co-founder of XR, made a statement via a prison phoneline. In it, he framed his activism as not being against climate change, but against “the biggest death project in human history”.
That death project has already begun, and it is about to get much worse, much quicker than we thought. Capitalism is its engine, and we must resist it in every way we can. Hundreds of millions of lives are in the balance.
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South African rebels mourn for their land outside the coal company planning to further pollute it. Photo: Alex Patrick/News 24
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