Government has recently designated extinction Rebellion on a list of organisations with extremist ideologies. While it is true that any group who spends their times complaining about things the government do can cause problems when they meet, to designate the group in organised crime group is absurd.
In a time when the entire world is more and more concerned about climate change and what we will be leaving for our future generations, the continued with extinction that humans are causing is of great concern. Indeed many of the mitigation features of earth that we are relying on, such as rain forests will not function properly if the extinctions are not stopped.
As I wrote recently, forest elephants are highly important ecosystem engineers,significant numbers of rainforests around the world that may collapse of forest elephants and other animals filling similar niches cease to exist in those places.
In the same way it is in theory possible for humans to do the pollination of flowers, it would be possible for humans to do the seed dispersal that elephants usually do. However should be an extremely expensive high man hour maintenance job, and would not work as efficiently anyway.
Extinction Rebellion, like the fight on climate change, have the ability to either allow us to leave a planet similar to the one we received for our children, or one that is barely possible to live on.
The government is certainly paid lip service to both of these issues. however they have certainly not put the full might of the British government behind it, case of extinction rebellion it is largely only been a few carefully times press releases that you can point at as showing their doing anything at all. these two issues are essential for the continued survival of our species in the lifestyle that we have become accustomed.
The government has spent the last decade or so first saying that of course we must take care of these things but only after the financial crash has been rectified,how we can only do anything about it after the epidemic is fully over and the market has recovered. We simply don’t have the time to wait, the government must act now. If it doesn’t have the time itself, it must empower the foreign office, and British consular offices around the world to take the lead. These issues must be addressed now, there isn’t time to waste and the government must stop suggesting there is.
This is dangerously incorrect. Extinction Rebellion was not *designated* an organised crime group. A member of the UK government suggested it *could* be. Please correct this or people will cite it as evidence of something untrue.
The article I had read stated this. I have corrected as you suggest. this article from the guardian at the time
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/jan/10/xr-extinction-rebellion-listed-extremist-ideology-police-prevent-scheme-guidance
is partially what the article is based on.
I agree that there is a difference, and I am annoyed that it was so badly put in several articles I read at the time.
However, the point stands. As you say the government talked about an organisation concerned about the continual extinction of animals as a problem, rather than as a group to engage with. Frankly, if you are concerned about the continuing extinction crisis and are working with a group to raise concern, and the government lists your organisation as an organised crime group, or merely suggests that it could be listed, both are extremely scary. While there may be a difference legally, the message is surely intended to spread fear among the group and try to disband it.
It is true that our government works harder than some on protecting the environment. However it certainly does not live up to many of its high goals.
It is possible to disagree about the exact position of the government on a whole range of climate change, environmental and destruction positions, but that is exactly the point.