Societal support and engagement with “Extinction Rebellion” and the “School Strike for Climate Change” within the United Kingdom
Abstract as pdf
Corresponding Author:
Mark Ashley Parry
Northumbria University United Kingdom
ashley.parry@northumbria.ac.uk
Author(s):
During 2019, there was increasing alarm amongst civil society about the impacts of climate change within the United Kingdom (BEIS, 2019). This has been demonstrated with the mass protests by “Extinction Rebellion” and “School Strike for Climate Change” against both the government and industry on a perceived lack of action in combatting climate change (BBC News, 2019; Laville and Watts, 2019). Currently there has been little research to find out the level of support for the different types of protests. This research was conducted using a survey which was posted on a number of different open access groups including Facebook and targeted emails between May and July 2019, with a total of 1,700 people responding. It was found that the majority respondents were overall supportive of “Extinction Rebellion”. In addition, it was found that respondents were also supportive of children striking for climate change and for the mass civil disobedience that “Extinction Rebellion” caused in London in April 2019, but not at the same level. However, it was also observed that respondents were in general not willing to join future “Extinction Rebellion” protests. Lastly, it was observed that females, younger people and politically left-wing voters were more likely to support these two types of protests. There is a suggestion from this type of response that significant numbers of people may be ready for an escalation of non-violent action that could force change in the systemic and structural determinants of crises. This input will weigh these findings against an expanded understanding of the nature of societal engagement in climate and related disaster risk reduction. In addition, the monitoring of the demographic composition of climate protests helps to assess the nature of likely reactions and resistance to the content of COP26 being hosted in the UK in November 2021.
References
BBC News (2019) ‘Extinction Rebellions Protest: What happened?’, BBC News, 25 April 2019. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-48051776 (Accessed: 23 November 2019)
BEIS (2019) BEIS Public Attitudes Tracker March 2019 (wave 29). London, United Kingdom: Department for Business and Energy.
Leville, S. and Watts, J. (2019) ‘Across the globe, millions join biggest climate protest ever’, The Guardian, 21 September. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/sep/21/across-the-globe-millions-join-biggest-climate-protestever (Accessed: 23 November 2019)
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