Source: BBC World News, YouTube
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HyaxctatdA
Date: 17/08/2019
Event: Roger Hallam: "... slaughter, death and starvation of six billion people this century"
Credit: BBC World News, Extinction Rebellion (especial thanks to GS@XR, on whose original transcript this one is based)
People:
Stephen Sackur: Welcome to HARDtalk, I'm Stephen Sackur. Back in 2015, the nations of the world made a formal commitment to act to keep global warming well below two degrees centigrade. So much for fine words. Global greenhouse gas emissions are still rising. The data suggests the planet is warming at an alarming rate! What to do about it? My guest today is Roger Hallam, co-founder of Extinction Rebellion, a movement dedicated to mass resistance and civil disobedience. How far are the climate rebels prepared to go? Roger Hallam, welcome to HARDtalk. There is, and has been for years, no shortage of activist groups committed to fighting for the cause of fighting climate change. Why the need now for Extinction Rebellion?
Roger Hallam: Well, I think the reason is really straightforward, is millions of people around the world have realized that we have come to the point where something drastic has to happen. And nothing is happening and that means we have to start breaking the law in order to make change happen.
Stephen Sackur: When you say nothing is happening, that seems to defy the truth that we see around us - not only are there heaps of different activist organizations working to further the ideas behind mitigating climate change, but governments around the world, as I mentioned in the introduction, have signed up to the Paris agreement, they are committed to doing what it takes.
Roger Hallam: Well, there is a massive lie going on which is: things are happening, but they're not and billions of people have realized that the governments have been lying for the last 30 years and the elites have been lying and the experts have being lying and the reason they've been lying is because they've said that carbon emissions will go down and they're going to act to make sure they go down, but they haven't - they've gone up 60 percent since 1990 and they're still going up. As you, said they went up 1.6 percent two years ago and 2.7 last year so this was the decade when it was all supposed to start happening, wasn't it? But it's not, so people are very angry, people are in a rage, people don't want their kids to die. You know, this is a... There's no words to describe how serious it is.
Stephen Sackur: But I guess what I'm getting to is this point: what's different about you? I mean we've had, for example, the leader of Greenpeace in this studio. He's talked in very similar terms about the alarming rate of the warming of the planet, he's talked about the rise in emissions, he's talked about the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere getting worse, all of that stuff. So, on the science there's no disagreement, but are you saying that groups like Greenpeace and many, many others have fundamentally failed in their mission to convince the world that things need to change?
Roger Hallam: Yes, we've fundamentally failed. I mean, I've failed, other activists have failed, campaigners have failed, we've all failed! The fact of the matter is, we're facing mass starvation in the next ten years, social collapse and the possible extinction of the human race. It couldn't be worse. So, that situation has come about over 30 years of failure - failure by the elites, failure by the governments and failure by campaigners.
Stephen Sackur: So your message is entirely about failure, it's about negativity, it is in a way, I suppose, a howl of rage and despair.
Roger Hallam: That's right, it is.
Stephen Sackur: And you think that is a message that the people of the world and the political leaders of the world are going to respond to?
Roger Hallam: Yes, and the reason why is, because when people go through depression and rage they come out and decide to do things. And Extinction Rebellion is the most successful climate change movement in the UK, only set up a year ago, it's got a hundred thousand people signed up to it. It's a mass civil disobedience, it's changed the conversation in this country and the reason why it's done that is because it's dedicated to telling the truth. And the truth is that we are in this beyond terrible situation and it is being brought about by the elites and governments lying to people and misleading people over thirty years.
Stephen Sackur: But aren't you lying and misleading people too? Because you are suggesting it is possible, for example, in the United Kingdom where the group was founded, that we could in the UK move to net zero carbon emissions by 2025, and that really isn't possible.
Roger Hallam: Of course it's possible, anything's possible. It's matter of whether there's political will.
Stephen Sackur: Okay, let me rephrase the question: It's not possible within the framework of our capitalist economy without causing unimaginable damage to people's lives.
Roger Hallam: Well, the damage is imaginable and it's proportionate and it's necessary, because the alternative is social collapse. That's the fundamental realization people have come to. There's not a third option here of carrying on business as usual.
Stephen Sackur: See, the problem is - the reason I began by discussing where you sit within the climate change and environmental movement is that you are an outlier among so many people who agree like you that there is now a climate emergency. For example, the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit, which sympathizes with much of the message that you deliver, does not sympathize at all with some of the objectives and targets you lay out, because they say that, for example, the net zero emissions by 2025 is technically, economically and politically impossible - has absolutely no chance of being fulfilled.
Roger Hallam: Well they're wrong! You know, we can do whatever we like in our society. It's a matter of whether we're prepared to undertake the costs of it. The fact of the matter is, and this is the major point Extinction Rebellion is trying to say, is that it is over for this civilization. The reason it's over is because of the hard physics. We're not making a political point or an ideological point or trying to be awkward or all the rest of it. We're simply saying that the science is real. If the science is real, it means we're facing social collapse - the reason we're facing social collapse is because of mass starvation and the reason we are going to have mass starvation is because of the collapse in the weather systems around the world.
Stephen Sackur: Yes, but I'm talking about the degree to which you say, action - the most radical form of action - has to be completed within the next six years, which is what you are saying. You're suggesting you're setting a target which would mean that people couldn't use combustion engine vehicles any more, they couldn't fly any more, they couldn't use gas to heat their homes any more, and I put it to you that suggesting that is possible makes you a fantasist.
Roger Hallam: It's like going to the doctor and a doctor says you've got cancer and if you carry on as normal you definitely gonna die, okay? Or you can try and change but you might still die. Those are the options for the human race now, if we are to believe the science.
Stephen Sackur: With respect, I don't think the science is saying that we're all gonna die within six years.
Roger Hallam: No no no, what we are saying, what the science is saying is: if there's not fundamental major change in the structure of the global economy in the next ten years, then we're heading for catastrophe and what that means is we're going to be heading for mass social collapse and mass starvation.
Stephen Sackur: Do you acknowledge that the message you are peddling - and it is full of past failure, deep negativity, the most urgent of alarms and emergencies for right now - do you accept that it can't be successful as a sort of movement without taking the public with you?
Roger Hallam: The public is starting to get round to the idea that we're facing social collapse. Before April, before there were 1200 arrests in the streets of London, in the biggest civil disobedience protest in British history, the British public didn't have any opinion on the climate emergency. Afterwards 67% of the British public agree there is one.
Stephen Sackur: Do you want to bring down the capitalist system as we know it, is that fair?
Roger Hallam: The capitalist system is going to be brought down by itself, the capitalist system's eating itself.
Stephen Sackur: Well no, but the point about your -
Roger Hallam: No, let me make this point clear. The capitalist system, the global system that we're in is in the process of destroying itself, and it will destroy itself in the next ten years. The reason for that is because it's destroying the climate. The climate is what's necessary to grow food. If you can't grow food there'll be starvation and social collapse. Now the problem is: is people in the elites and people in the BBC and people in the governmental sector cannot get their heads round what's actually happening. The fact of the matter is if you go out and talk to ordinary people in the street, they're aware of this and that's why hundreds of thousands of people around the world have started to take action. Because they have lost faith.
Stephen Sackur: I understand - your perspective on the climate is that the emergency is here, it's now and we have to respond.
Roger Hallam: No I don't think you have, you see -
Stephen Sackur: I want to ask you about the degree to which you see yourself as a revolutionary. Is that how you would characterize your -
Roger Hallam: There's a revolution coming anyway, it's irrelevant. I know what you're trying to do. You're trying to say that there's these radical people... Everything's okay and they're trying to change stuff and if they weren't there being annoying, things could carry on. The fact of the matter is, if we don't change things they're going to be ten times worse. And those are the two options. That's why I'm telling you about the analogy of the doctor. When you go and see a doctor you don't blame the doctor, you don't accuse the doctor of being revolutionary, because the doctor is simply telling you what the science is, and the science is we're going to have social collapse or we're going to try and do something about it.
Stephen Sackur: Well, with respect, science is different from politics. You're taking science and then you're putting a political interpretation on what it means, how it's going to impact.
Roger Hallam: No, there's no there's no political interpretation here.
Stephen Sackur: Let me put to you the words of a former head of the Metropolitan Police Counter-Terror Command, who has studied your movement. He says Extinction Rebellion is seeking the breakdown of democracy and the state. He regards you as akin to a dangerous terrorist organization. Well you're telling me that you're going to take the public with you when a former police chief is suggesting that you actually are anarchists who want to bring down the state and our democratic system. You think the public is ready for that?
Roger Hallam: The public is now aware that the elites are taking them to their death, because that's what the science is saying. The people that are betraying this country and this nation are the people in the elites, like the guy you've just mentioned, because they're refusing to accept the reality. And that's why there will be mass social disturbances over the next year or two.
Stephen Sackur: You stood in the European parliamentary elections as an independent with this message in London, more than 2 million voters. You managed to garner 924 and you're telling me the public is marching alongside you.
Roger Hallam: 67 percent of the public know there's a climate emergency. If you know there's a climate emergency it means that we're facing a situation more serious than we've ever had to deal with in the whole of British history.
Stephen Sackur: Politicians are now talking of climate emergencies - making the leap from talking of a climate emergency to the mass civil disturbances, disruption, the bringing down of the state as we know it, that's something quite different. How far are you prepared to go? We've seen, let's say hundreds, sometimes maybe even a thousand or two of your Extinction Rebellion colleagues and activists on the streets of London gluing themselves to buildings, gluing themselves to roads, disrupting traffic, once even disrupting public transport which to many seemed a bit odd. But how far are you prepared to take this mass civil disobedience?
Roger Hallam: This October thousands of people will come to the streets of London and they'll stay on the streets of London. How long I don't know, because it'd be up to them but you'll see mass disturbances. They'll be non-violent, they will be respectful and it'll be disruptive and that's the methodology that we're using, that's the method we're using.
Stephen Sackur: You say, carefully, you say "non-violent" - in previous comments you've said of your protests, demonstrations, civil disobedience, that quote "some people may die". I wondered what you meant by that?
Roger Hallam: Because in civil disobedience struggles over the last hundred and fifty years, when you challenge the elites, as Gandhi says, first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, and then they fight you. When they fight you, then they tend to kill people, and that's historically what happens. I'm just stating that as a fact, a sociological fact. You know, when Martin Luther King used to do civil rights campaigns in the 1960s, people got killed and that's part of the process of political change.
Stephen Sackur: You're carefully manipulating this, aren't you? You said people will see in the evening news 10-year olds and grannies getting dragged off by the police. I believe you've made a particular point at Extinction Rebellion of teaching civil disobedience methods to young people, including schoolchildren. If you want them on the front lines -
Roger Hallam: Well why do you think school children and grannies are getting involved in putting themselves in harm's way to get arrested? Why do you think that's happening?
Stephen Sackur: Well I'm asking you why you're encouraging them to put themselves in harm's way?
Roger Hallam: I'm not encouraging anyone, okay? What I'm involved in doing -
Stephen Sackur: You are actually encouraging children to...
Roger Hallam: If grannies turn up to a meeting and are in tears about what's happening to their grandchildren, it's not it's not what I'm doing that makes them sit down in the road. It's the same with teenagers. Teenagers are shitting themselves about what's happening for the future. They've got another 50, 60, 70 years to live on this planet. By that time there could be only a billion people left! I mean that's six billion people that have died from starvation or being slaughtered in war. I mean the scale of it is beyond the imagination, isn't it? And this is the biggest problem, it's the elites and the BBC and the conventional media has simply not grasped the enormity of what's happening.
Stephen Sackur: Well never mind the elites, it seems that many people even who were involved in the early days of Extinction Rebellion, like yourself, think you are going far too far.
Roger Hallam: You haven't heard what I've said and this is the fundamental problem.
Stephen Sackur: I'm listening very carefully.
Roger Hallam: No I don't think you are, you're listening but you're not emotionally connecting and this is the problem. You know, I've just spent a year doing interviews like this with journalists and journalists are not emotionally connecting with what's happening. I am talking about the slaughter, death and starvation of six billion people this century. That's what the science predicts, that's the trajectory we're on and that requires absolutely desperate measures to stop it and it's going to be painful -
Stephen Sackur: Believe me, I am engaging in the sense that I'm a citizen just as you are, I am going to be just as much prey to everything that's happening with our planet as you are...
Roger Hallam: Well, you're not are you ?
Stephen Sackur: I have children and -
Roger Hallam: Certainly, yeah, I don't know what age you are but you're not going to be on this planet for that much longer, neither am I. If you're a teenager you can see this happening over the next 50, 60 years.
Stephen Sackur: Why do you think - and I am engaging with you but I'm not sure you're engaging with me - why do you think so many people, even inside Extinction Rebellion, think that you have gone too far? When you recently said you wanted to put drones up around Heathrow, to ensure that Heathrow Airport was closed down there were people inside your own organization who said "Hang on a minute, that is not what we are about". You have to consider strategy in a way that you're not doing.
Roger Hallam: The fact of the matter is with the aviation industry and the whole carbon economy, all this activity is bringing us to destruction and there's people in Extinction Rebellion, and in many other networks, who as an act of conscience are going to be taking action against it. And that's the same as happened in the past.
Stephen Sackur: I'll give you a quote from somebody, I don't know if you know him personally but Simon McKibbin, a lecturer at Cambridge University, who joined Extinction Rebellion and has now left specifically because he was horrified and upset by your plan to shut down Heathrow with drones. He said "threatening to fly drones into a busy airspace is a departure from the ethics of non-violence. It threatens people, puts people at risk" he said "I believe if this is permitted to go ahead we'll lose the good will of the public". Why do you persist with this?
Roger Hallam: Because we're facing mass starvation and because people generally in a society and particularly people in the elites, are not capable of, and are not empathizing with that reality.
Stephen Sackur: Will you put those drones up?
Roger Hallam: Myself? I haven't decided what I am personally doing...
Stephen Sackur: Those of your movement who believe, like you, it's justifiable.
Roger Hallam: This is what's coming down the road and if the elites don't respond to non-violent action then you know what's going to come next - people other than Extinction Rebellion will use violence, that's what's coming down the road. I mean, I'm speaking as a sociologist here, I'm not saying it's good or bad - what I'm saying is if you put a society under a massive amount of stress, if you propose -
Stephen Sackur: Will you -
Roger Hallam: Just leave me a minute, just let me finish this. If you tell the citizens of a country that the government is facilitating their death then you can expect one thing, particularly in a country like Britain where people don't put up with such nonsense. You can expect rebellion.
Stephen Sackur: Will you - just answer the question - will you try to close down Heathrow Airport with drones?
Roger Hallam: It hasn't been decided. it hasn't been decided and I don't want to talk about specific things because that's not up to me, that's up to the people who are engaged in it. What I can say to you is, this is what's coming down the line.
Stephen Sackur: Doesn't it strike you that if you were serious about trying to lobby, pressure, change policy where it matters most you'd be working in Washington DC, Beijing, maybe Moscow, maybe Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. It's very easy in democracies like Britain to get people out on the streets, to glue yourself to railings - it is, ultimately, a democracy - but in many parts the world which matter most to this particular debate, there is no possibility of Extinction Rebellion.
Roger Hallam: Most of the civil disobedience campaigns over the last hundred years have happened in poor authoritarian countries. And the fact of the matter is, when people have had enough they'll undertake sacrifice in order to bring change. And that's the most effective way, according to the scholarship of bringing about rapid change in a society - is mass participation in civil disobedience.
Stephen Sackur: And when it comes to this mass participation, you've said thousands on the streets. Do you really believe that with the methodology you've talked about in this interview, the mindset you bring to this, you are going to win the hearts and minds of the public, not just in this country but publics around the world?
Roger Hallam: I think it's inevitable, I think it's inevitable, yes. I mean the major question now is: have we left it too late?
Stephen Sackur: See, I'm just mindful of international examples. Australia recently had an election - the centre-left went into that election promising major cuts in greenhouse gas emissions over the next few years, the centre-right went into that election saying no, we're not because it will damage jobs, it will damage industry, we're actually going to open up new coal fields across Queensland, one of the biggest states in Australia. The centre-right won.
Roger Hallam: Yes, so what's happening is the level of rage in countries is increasing exponentially and it hasn't hit that critical mass in many countries yet, but it's going to hit that critical mass very quickly and it will shock the elites, it's going to shock the governments with its intensity. Because a critical mass of people are starting to realise what's going on, which is the elites and the governments aren't actually going to do anything, they're not going to fulfill their primary responsibility which is to look after the people. It'll happen quickly, it'll happen quickly - this isn't something that builds up gradually. If you look historically it happens, nothing's happening and then something happens - bang! - and all the media think "Where did that come from?" and what I am here today to tell you is, this is coming. This is coming down the trail.
Stephen Sackur: No, I hear your message and you accuse me of not emotionally engaging with you and then in the course of the conversation I've just been thinking to myself your message is so unrelentingly bleak and negative.
Roger Hallam: It's not a message, right - when you go to the doctor and he tells you you have cancer, that's not a message, it's the science, it's the science!
Stephen Sackur: But we began by agreeing that there are various people across the environmental green and climate change movements who all agree about the science but come to very different conclusions about the best means of delivering change. There are many scientists who actually will not just focus on the negative, the bleak and the dark but will say, you know what we human beings are making some progress, we are cutting emissions, for example in the energy sector.
Roger Hallam: I've just told you that's total nonsense, it's total nonsense, you shouldn't be saying it -
Stephen Sackur: There's no room for positivity and hope. Hope, that word "hope" - you see no room for hope whatsoever?
Roger Hallam: When you go to the doctor, the doctor's got a responsibility to tell you whether you've got cancer or not and whether it's terminal or not. Hope doesn't come into it. It's a matter of scientific analysis. Shows you like a x-ray of your lungs or whatever, right? It's a scientific reality, the Arctic is melting - it's ice, it's warm, it's melting, it's going to go. Whether you've got fearful of it or you're hopeful about it or you've got a political problem with it, it's gone, it's going. That's the way the world is, it's a harsh thing, science doesn't have any sentimentality about it - it's not a political thing, it's not a sort of give or take sort of thing.
Stephen Sackur: Roger Hallam, we have to end there but I thank you very much for being on HARDtalk.
Roger Hallam: Thanks.