Every day I struggle to hold the insanity of our collective behaviour within me – in my psyche, my heart and my body. The harm we are causing to ourselves, to our fellow humans and all other beings, and our incredible, beautiful home, is horrific. Yet I know that what I think and feel is a healthy response to what’s going on.
In April 2021, Frans Timmermans, the vice-president of the EU commission, said: “Today’s children will face a future of fighting wars for water and food.” We are already facing significant impacts on our harvests here. The prospect of wars over resources and conflict caused by and exacerbated by climatic conditions is an almost unbearable intergenerational injustice. The loss of biodiversity, meanwhile, will erode the foundations of our economies, livelihoods, food security, law and order, health and quality of life worldwide.
If the government’s primary duty is to protect the people, then the form of democracy we have is failing. We took this action because the institutions and systems that we relied upon were not working, and do not seem to really understand the danger, although they do know about it. It’s baffling and utterly terrifying.
JP Morgan, more than any other bank, is fuelling this crime against humanity. It is pouring petrol on to the fire, in the form of hundreds of billions of dollars of fossil fuel investments. Its profits are immense. The bank claims we all need “a reality check” on likely progress to a global energy transition, warning that it is a “highly complex” process, to be “measured in decades or generations, not years”.
But JP Morgan’s own report, leaked to the press in 2020, also states that climate change is a threat to the survival of the human race.
I don’t think these bankers are intending to kill people and crash the economy but it’s as if they are blinded by the acquisition of wealth, or captured by addiction, or in an altered state of consciousness, asleep, or compartmentalising to the extreme. I believe that almost all humans have caring and compassion within them, and this can be reached.
I took action in the hope that people in those offices, and in the wider JPMorgan Chase corporation, and people in general, are moved to take the next bold step that they can, to make drastic change. When you see doctors and grandmothers breaking your windows in objection to your work, I believe this has great potential for change.
If JP Morgan changes, it leads the market. There have been extensive attempts to change JP Morgan’s behaviour by citizens with much more gentle methods than we used. Our communication was bold. And we have some signs that this may be working. A few days after we broke the windows, a piece in the Financial Times described Extinction Rebellion as annoying but performing a “vital function”. We have statements from senior level people in banking who support these actions – and say they have enabled change, and that they are needed. We know that many people in JP Morgan are talking about what has happened to their windows. Since the windows of Barclays and HSBC were broken, both banks have divested from new oil and gas projects. Public pressure contributes.
I am outraged by the links between JP Morgan and our government. Sajid Javid, to take one example, worked at JP Morgan before entering politics and returned to JP Morgan soon after leaving his role in the top financial position in this country, in 2020.
When the threat is existential, largely ignored and rapidly developing, the burden falls to ordinary people to step up and help create the change.
We know from history that when ordinary people take a stand against injustice and take bold action, otherwise unimaginable or seemingly impossible change can be created. Examples include the UK poll tax refusal, boycotts, divestment, sanctions, strikes, movements for people’s civil rights – including gay rights, disabled rights and voting rights – and communities resisting pipelines, fracking, mining, deforestation, water pollution, deportations, evictions and colonial rule.
The former UN climate chief Christiana Figueres has said: “Civil disobedience is not only a moral choice, it is also the most powerful way of shaping world politics.” Emmeline Pankhurst said: “The argument of the broken pane of glass is the most valuable argument in modern politics.” Her statue is right next to parliament.
In April 2019, a huge uprising of people closed down areas in central London for two weeks. By the start of May, parliament had declared a climate and nature emergency, finally being open and truthful with the public about the scale of the threat. A net zero target and citizens’ assembly followed. Again, we see public action, disobedience, driving change. However, adequate action did not follow. When all other avenues have been exhausted, and the stakes are so high, it is reasonable, and I think necessary, to take peaceful steps that have a reasonable chance of succeeding.
I intend to continue to try to find what stability I can in my life, in a world containing much change, danger and instability. I will not look away and I will emotionally engage.
In May, the former government chief scientist David King said: “On our current path, civilisation as we know it will disappear.” I will do what I can to try to change that path. And I will accept the consequences.
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