Will eXtinction Rebellion succeed and somehow avert the onrushing climate apocalypse and planetary ecocide? Should I be on the streets and getting signed up to be arrested?
While I applaud the media savvy branding, some of the tactics, the urgency and relative militancy of the campaign I have some questions which I think need urgent answers if the movement is to retain credibility and momentum.
The eXtinction Rebellion website lists three ‘demands’
- Government must tell the truth by declaring a climate and ecological emergency, working with other institutions to communicate the urgency for change.
- Government must act now to halt biodiversity loss and reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2025.
- Government must create and be led by the decisions of a Citizens’ Assembly on climate and ecological justice.
‘learn about critical thinking, hear balanced information from experts and stakeholders, deliberate in small groups, and draft and vote on recommendations. The assembly will be conducted by a non-partisan organisation under independent oversight.’
You can watch a video about Sortition here and it is quite a ride!
I have the following questions about this Sortition led assembly:
- Who will determine expertise criteria and how?
- Who will choose the experts that meet it?
- Who will decide what is ‘balanced’ information
- Who will decide which ‘non-partisan’ organisation conducts the assembly? How will their presumed neutrality be held to account and by whom?
By demanding that parliamentary democracy ‘IS LED BY’ this assembly, eXtinction Rebellion are effectively outsourcing the political, social and practical issues of climate change to a Sortition derived committee. Be clear what this means!
Participants with no relevant expertise of their own and indeed no indication of any generic intellectual capacity will be:
- Selected via algorithm
- Taught how to think by an as yet unnamed third party
- Given ‘expert’ information by an as yet unnamed third party
- Lobbied by ‘stakeholders’ selected via an unnamed process
The inventor of Sortition enthuses that “diversity trumps ability” and that “if you give people responsibility they take responsibility” – two statements so daft I can barely type them for laughing.
Quite how a nation of 60 million people will react to having their suffrage on climate change removed in favour of a committee derived by Sortition and eXtinction Rebellion needs further study I suspect!
Suffice it to say that Sortition is one of the most superficial and stupid ideas I have seen in decades – that it lies at the heart of eXtinction Rebellion demands leaves me aghast.
If eXtinction Rebellion are to be taken seriously as a political force then their wacky embrace of a Sortition derived assembly as an ‘end run’ around parliamentary democracy must go – and quickly.
I fear that this embrace of Sortition is indicative of a wholesale rejection of hierarchies, be they of ideas, ability or appropriate responsibility – if so then this movement will have to grow up fast – or collapse into an all too familiar pattern of dysfunction and acrimony.
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