“There comes a point where disrupting the public is no longer productive,” says Rupert Read. “It just makes people annoyed.”
The former spokesperson and strategist for Extinction Rebellion would know about annoying people. He still thinks there’s merit in disruptive protests. Extinction Rebellion “did a superb job raising consciousness around the climate,” he tells me over a pot of rooibus tea with oat milk in a central London hotel. Although we’re covering depressingly existential topics, the emeritus philosophy professor is upbeat, even eloquent.
“You know, people say all publicity is good publicity. But it’s not true. Some publicity is bad publicity,” he continues. Just Stop Oil, an offshoot of Extinction Rebellion, failed to grasp this, he argues. He’s probably right: a recent study by Social Change Lab found that after Just Stop Oil’s week-long disruption of the M25 back in 2022, there was not an increase in support for climate organisation’s policies, and in some cases, support reduced. Polls say Just Stop Oil is less popular than Jacob Rees-Mogg.
“What is needed now is no longer to grab attention,” Read says. “What is needed is to actually make progress.” He is one of the directors of the Climate Majority Project (CMP), which aims to help the “silent majority” of people who care about climate change to take action.
The silent majority, Read tells me, is not made up of your traditional climate and leftist activists, but a mix of “businesspeople, finance people, conservative people, rural people, working-class people, all the people who have tended often to feel alienated from the environmental movement.” It is paramount, he explains, that “all need to be genuinely welcomed in”.
Radicalism doesn’t mean glueing one’s hand to the M25
The CMP is incubating numerous campaigns aimed at helping climate projects grow and get funding, and connecting activists with each other. His and his colleagues’ expertise is used to aid and promote a range of organisations. One example, which demonstrates Read’s pragmatism, is his work with insurance companies. As climate instability leads us to “a world that is uninsurable”, the CMP works directly with climate-concerned insurers to enable them “to be part of the transformation into having a future”. What some people have realised, and some haven’t, is that “there really are no profits on a dead planet,” he says. It’s about changing businesses from “the bad guys” into “the good guys”.
The CMP also runs its own projects. The Climate Courage Campaign, for example, aims to turn those feeling climate anxiety into activists. The initiative is particularly aimed at young people, who feel overwhelmed learning about the issue. Read provides schools with resources to “turn fear into courage”.
Despite his new pragmatic approach, Read’s radical foundations haven’t crumbled. During our conversation, he floats critiques of capitalism, consumerism, the need for endless economic growth—which he says is both “false” and “highly reckless”—and the subsequent effects on the climate. His aims are grand: what is needed, he tells me, “is a transformation of our civilisation”. To achieve this, we must “act as citizens, and not merely as consumers.” To be radical “doesn’t mean that one has to glue one’s hand to the M25 or to a work of art.”
We keep talking on the way to Liverpool Street Station, from which Read will return to his home in rural Norfolk. I ask whether he has hope for the future. “Hope comes from action,” he tells me as he walks through the ticket gate. On the train, he sends a text to finish his point. “The future is going to be rough, and this crucible could be the making of us.”
