Audio and transcript

• Liz: What do you think about Extinction Rebellion and the whole idea of civil disobedience?
• Lyndon: I think it’s quite exciting, I think, you know, at least, people are trying to do something. But it was quite, quite telling I think the other day when, remember that guy who, from Extinction Rebellion, who jumped on top of a train, and it was at 6 o'clock in the morning, and I think he alienated a lot of people and somebody punched him.
• Cheryl: Oh wow!
• Liz: That's alienation, yeah! So it’s about climate, right?
• Lyndon: Oh, we're supposed to talk about...
• Liz: I don't know, I was just...
• Lyndon: Yes, of course it is. It's about, you know, it's about realising that we've got to do something now! And I think there is a lot of people, you know, who just feel that they have to do something. They've got no choice.
• Liz: Okay.
• Lyndon: But the idea is, the problem is that they've been alienating some people.
• Liz: But it seems strange to me, because in my mind, catching the train is kind of the right way forward, in terms of the environment.
• Lyndon: Yeah, and I think that that was the, one of the problems but one of the strengths of the Extinction Rebellion group, wasn't it? You know, people can basically do anything they want but they did write, I think, the people, some people, in the name of Extinction Rebellion. They wrote an apology because apparently they stopped people getting to work, you know. And it wasn't the most, the richest people.
• Liz: Okay, so then, they're trying to get the poorest people onside.
• Lyndon: I think they realise they've made a lot of mistakes because they sort of, you know, just wanted to bring the attention, you know, about the end of the world, the possibility of the end of the world, to people, in whatever way. And I think that was part of the problem because people, you know, didn't really know what they were doing.
• Liz: What about you, Cheryl? I mean, in America, there's a great history of civil disobedience but not necessarily for climate...
• Cheryl: Right. It's very old, in the States; there were editorial cartoons as a means of protest and other writers who wrote things about non-violent protest and civil disobedience, dating back to the 1800s, all the way up through Martin Luther King. He was...
• Liz: A really famous example, I was thinking of the civil rights movement
• Cheryl: Rosa Parks, that was civil rights and civil disobedience. It was non-violent protest.
• Lyndon: But does it work?
• Cheryl: It did, that time, in theory at least. The laws were changed so hopefully this, for climate change, will work as well.

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