The world’s newest movement against climate degradation uses the ominous symbol of an hourglass inside a circle. For anyone paying attention to the series of alarming reports issuing from the UN and virtually every reputable scientific body, the point is pretty obvious. If we human beings are to survive in anything like the level of comfort that at least some of us have achieved, we had better abandon our addiction to carbon-based growth and even the religion of growth itself. Time, like the sand in the hourglass, is slipping away all too quickly.
Extinction Rebellion (XR) has grown at an impressive rate using tactics of peaceful disruption to bring urban life to a periodic standstill in some 60 cities across the industrialized world. It is remarkable that in less than a year XR has become the focus of ecological protest in so many places. It is more clarion call than actual organization; a call felt by an increasingly desperate part of the populace, particularly, the young facing a very bleak future.
