Indianne Campbell Zuleika Rodriguez

By last October there had been 1,600 arrests of Extinction Rebellion (XR) protesters in London, and policing XR protests had cost the Met Police £37 million, showing that 2019 was the year that environmental activism was taken to a new level.

Environmentalism is defined as concern about and action aimed at protecting the environment. The first European environmental movements arrived in Europe in the 19th Century, mainly as a response to the increasing lev- els of smoke pollution linked to the Industrial Revolution.

Although industrialisation brought jobs it also brought pollution and diseases, such as cholera. A lack of environmental regulations meant that factory pollution and urban sprawl were unchecked, which led to the establishment of campaigning groups keen to protect public health and green spaces.

The 70s were an important decade for environmentalism in Britain, with momentum for its concerns gathering around the world. It was also in the 70s that scientists began to notice depletion of ozone in our atmosphere, though it was not until 1985 that a substantial hole in the ozone layer - over Antarctica was widely reported in the press. The first national green party in Europe was founded in Britain in 1973. Called “PEOPLE”, it eventu- ally became the Green Party. Another milestone was the establishment of Earth Day in 1970. her approach to campaigning. Back in the UK she met fellow activist Roger Hallam and so XR was born.

XR has three demands of the UK gov- ernment: that it declares a “climate and ecological emergency”; that it acts now to halt biodiversity loss and reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2025; and finally that it creates a Citizens’ Assembly to make decisions on “climate and eco- logical justice.”

Over half of XR’s money comes from online crowdfunding. A further 35 per cent is from sympathetic trusts and about 11 per cent comes from individ- ual donors.

Their October protest raised £100.000 in just 12 hours. The group’s main costs are for food, tents, stages, power, sound equipment, art displays, banners and PR.

XR has about 650 groups in around 45 countries. Although it’s hard to say how many members they are, press reports suggest that the pro- tests that took place in London in October 2019 included environmental scientists, carpenters, psycholo - gists, administrators, business own- ers, teachers, mental health workers and the retired elderly.

But what makes someone become an activist?

According to a research article published in the journal Frontiers in Communication, the strongest predictor of environmental activism is risk perception – i.e. the more worried you are about the effects of global warming the more like you are to do something about it!

Meanwhile, the factors that predict citizen activism are very similar for both groups. The single strongest predictor of citizen activism over- all was risk perception – perceiving global warming as a greater risk to oneself, one’s family, other people, future generations, and other spe- cies. The greater the perceived risk, the more likely Latinos and nonLatino Whites were to contact government officials, urging them to act.

Personal contact by an organization working on global warming was another factor that predicted citizen activ- ism. Finally, perhaps unsurpris - ingly, the more barriers individuals perceived the less likely they were to take political action. The bar- riers most often cited were “no one has ever asked me to contact elected officials about global warming” and “I don’t know which elected officials to contact.”

To help find out for myself I attended a weekly XR meeting at a chapel in Hackney. By the time I arrived only about 50 people were left, but I man- aged to get the number of one of the activists that Indianne the photogra- pher had taken a picture of. His name was Joe and I arranged to speak to him the next day.

Joe is a 25-year-old who grew up in East Yorkshire and now lives in East London. He’s active in XR but also works for the environmental news web- site China Dialogue. Although always an environmentalist, his concern really caught fire one evening when he was at home watching TV and came across David Attenborough’s climate change documentary The Facts. It was a watershed moment when he realised that unless he did something actively to protect the planet, he would just be part of the problem.

The October protests were significant for Joe, personally as well as polit- ically. He remembers a quiet morning outside Westminster Abbey when some people walked by and he began talk- ing to them. Before he knew it more people had gathered and before long he found that he had a crowd of about 30 people all listening to what he had to say about how they could make a difference if they joined XR.

“It was inspiring to see how I could change people’s minds so quickly,” said Joe.

“These people had thought they were helpless, but then realised they were not.”

In an article on the BBC History, Karen Jones, reader in environ - mental and cultural history at the University of Kent, traces the start of modern environmentalism to 18th Century Romantic movements and the poet Wordsworth who wrote a guide to The Lake District in which he described the lakes as “a sort of national property” that needed to be protected.

Joe is just one of a swelling army of young people who have rejected the age of the selfie to work towards recording and protect - ing something more collective – the planet on which we live – and as such, according to Karen Jones, he is part of a significant historical movement.

She ends the article with the fol - lowing statement: “Environmentalism is a major part of modern British history. And living, as we are, in the age of the Anthropocene – an epoch defined by humanity’s capacity to trans- form the world around us – it is set to become more important still.”