The global elite is destroying our planet. So why are Extinction Rebellion activists the ones in the dock?

Rich elites and corporations have corrupted democracy, and pushed a blind faith in markets and money so far that over the last 30 years they have caused us to breach critical planetary limits. Climate breakdown is their doing

It has been hard to ignore the Extinction Rebellion (XR) protesters who have taken over bridges, blocked major roads, planted trees, danced and even temporarily brought a halt to the DLR tube line. Leading on from their naked protest in parliament, they have certainly grabbed the headlines, generating countless column inches (including this one), garnering radio and TV interviews, and, to the chagrin of many of the big green NGOs, sparked more discussion about climate change than years of their campaigning had done.

There are rightly many criticisms and discussions about the XR protests, from the whiteness of its mobilisation, the long term viability of building a movement solely around the tactic of “non-violent civil disobedience and disruption”, to the lack of concrete political demands to build broader public support.

As well as to the very real concern that it effectively sidelines the very people who are already facing the devastating impacts of climate change – those who are dying today and not sometime in the future, the people of the global south, who are also the ones least responsible for the climate crisis. But whatever one thinks about Extinction Rebellion, the truth is that for good or worse the School Strike for Climate and the Extinction Rebellion protests have propelled the issue of climate change up the news agenda.

Climate scientists rang alarm bells last October, warning of the catastrophic impacts of breaching the critical 1.5C guardrail, precipitating a sense of panic amongst citizens in rich countries. But it was certainly not news for those already experiencing the climate crisis, or those at the top responsible for the lack of action.

Having spent nearly a decade at the UN climate talks, I can tell you that rich countries such as the UK have long known the truth about the climate crisis, including the urgent need to drastically cut their emissions. But on their balance sheets they simply calculated that sacrificing black and brown people in the global south to climate violence was an acceptable consequence of protecting their business interests.

This is not by accident. Rich elites and corporations have corrupted democracy, and pushed a blind faith in markets and money so far that over the last 30 years they have caused us to breach critical planetary limits. They sold an ideology and an economic system to the world that allowed them to amass more wealth and power, while keeping the many marginalised and poor.

Climate destruction was the inevitable consequence of this neoliberal economic model – a model that insisted on deregulation, privatisation and allowing corporations to operate free from government intervention and put profit before people and the planet.

It also made sure that those facing the worst impacts were also least able to respond. From driving a race to the bottom on wages to eradicating state regulation and vital public services, it condemned 3.5 billion people to survive on $5 a day, whilst the top 1 per cent amassed over half of the world’s wealth and a carbon footprint 175 times that of the poorest.

At the heart of their power sits the City of London, which continues to operate much as it did from the times of slavery, colonialism, with only one concern: the amassing of wealth and power. Today it generates around 22 per cent of the UK’s GDP, much of it fuelled by the very top 100 businesses responsible for 70 per cent of global emissions.

Pull back the cover and we can see how rotten the City is. Fossil fuel shares on the London Stock Exchange are worth more than the entire GDP of sub-Saharan Africa, with a third of the value of FTSE flowing from the extractive industry, up from a tenth just a decade ago. It is home to many of the world’s biggest mining companies, with British banks and insurance companies investing hundreds of millions of pounds a year in mining projects around the world. It is the perfect location for the mining industry’s key lobbying organisation, the International Council on Mining and Metals. They do so because they can count on UK government support overseas, often in the face of huge resistance by local people, and they can count on tax breaks and subsidies to continue with their planetary destruction.

By right it should be these politicians and CEOs, whose business it is has been to fuel climate destruction, who should be in the dock, not climate protesters.

Asad Rehman is the executive director of global justice charity War on Want