The Guardian view on environmental activism: new energy is welcome | Editorial

Protesters promising a new wave of civil disobedience linked to the extinction crisis are right to be infuriated by government inactionHow to push green issues up the political agenda is a question that has exercised environmentalists for decades. Do dark warnings about the world that awaits us if we do not curtail carbon emissions and protect forests and oceans motivate people to act, or scare them off? Are apocalyptic visions such as that in Cormac McCarthy's novel The Road what we need to open our minds, or an inducement to give up trying?Opinion is divided, as events of the past week have illustrated. In advance of his latest wildlife television series, Dynasties, David Attenborough said at the weekend that too many warnings about endangered species are a "real turn-off". A few days earlier, the activist group Extinction Rebellion launched a campaign of civil disobedience by demanding a zero-carbon economy by 2025. Writing in advance of a protest in London that saw 15 people arrested, Green MEP Molly Scott Cato said she and others have been driven to break the law after spending years ringing alarm bells and being ignored. Continue reading...