From Extinction Revolution to “Moderate Flank”

Rupert Read and Jim Bendell are 2 Brits supplying the intellectual hardware for the Extinction Rebellion (ER) which has made a real impact on public consciousness in the last few years. Read’s Extinction Rebellion – insights from the inside (2020) maps the progress of just a few years; and has just started a new campaign Moderate Flank to bring home to a broader group in society the importance of their active involvement in the struggle against climate change.

Jim Bendell is another academic who wrote an important Deep Adaptation essay in 2018 and the Brave New Europe site recently gave Bendell this opportunity to update us. Authorities are so concerned about the protests of ER that, in the UK< they have enacted tough new legislation which breach basic human rights (not least of reporting) and the US Atlantic journal accuses the protestors of being anti-people

I had started to read Rupert Read’s Do You Want to know the Truth? but quickly got sidetracked into what, at first sight, seems to be one of the most thoughtful of sites – Accidental Gods – run by two women, Manda Scott and Faith Tilleray. Its mission statement is not, for me, very clear but its contents - which include a superb end-of-year roundup from Manda and and a treasure trove of podcasts – really resonated. A recent podcast was an interview with Read about his latest book

Readers know that I feel guilty about the infrequency with which I post about climate change – although I do remember the impact Bill McKibben’s The End of Nature made on me when it first came out in 1989. I have, since then, read many many books on the subject – but the 2 which I most enjoyed were probably Alastair McIntosh’s “Soil and Soul” (2004) and Hell and High Water – climate change, hope and the human condition (2007). 

 McIntosh is a real original with a strong spiritual side – which may not be everyone’s cup of tea. But he is in terrific form in this recent video where he reveals a laugh, like Jung’s, which reverbated across the Swiss mountains at his villa lakeside.