Timescale According to the
Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit, the time frame being urged by XR is "an ambition that technically, economically and politically has absolutely no chance of being fulfilled." Due to the inaction of governments in the past, it would be difficult to achieve net zero in such a short time frame. It said that one way
to go net zero by 2025. Such action would have the scrapping of flying and the removal 38 million petrol and diesel cars from the roads. Twenty-six million gas boilers would have also had to be disconnected in six years to meet their target. The Rapid Transition Alliance and the
Centre for Alternative Technology are more positive about the date specified.
Politics and ideology on Climate'' Former spokesperson
Zion Lights later became a critic of Extinction Rebellion, arguing that they often emphasise symbolic or system-change-oriented proposals rather than practical measures to reduce emissions. She stated that discussions on
energy policy within Extinction Rebellion are sometimes dismissed as irrelevant unless they involve broader systemic change, while she has argued for prioritising the rapid deployment of affordable,
clean energy. Extinction Rebellion's third demand ("Government must create and be led by the decisions of a Citizens' Assembly on climate and ecological justice") has been summarised by its leadership as a demand to "go beyond politics". This demand has been criticised by
socialists, including individuals who have participated in the movement's action. Writing for
The Independent in April 2019, Natasha Josette, an anti-racist activist and member of
Labour for a
Green New Deal, critiqued Extinction Rebellion both for marginalising ethnic minorities and for not recognising that "the climate crisis is the result of
neoliberal capitalism, and a global system of extraction, dispossession and oppression". Also writing for
The Independent, Amardeep Dhillon argued that XR's narrow focus on net zero carbon emissions meant that it ignored
extractivism and the threat to the environment posed by companies in the extractive sector using
greenwashing to defend and advance their economic interests, suggesting that XR's position "threatens to give carte blanche to governments and corporations who are happy to shift the burden of climate destruction onto poor and indigenous communities of colour in the global South". In October 2019, Erica Eisen, an XR participant, wrote an article for
Current Affairs in which she linked the movement's "beyond politics" slogan not only to the demand for a citizens' assembly but also to a refusal to take stances on issues beyond the environment, in order to gain as broad a base of support as possible, highlighting the movement's ban on organising community groups based on political identity. She argued that "our current economic system is [not] compatible with continued life on this planet. It is unrealistic and irresponsible to pretend that a proposed climate solution which keeps
capitalism intact is any kind of solution at all." In her view, failing to articulate an
anti-capitalist position undermined the movement's credibility by "lend[ing] tacit support" to large companies responsible for environmentally destructive behaviour. She also suggested that failing to embrace leftist positions would give space for far right groups to piggyback and exploit environmentalist rhetoric, citing the examples of the
Christchurch mosque shootings and
2019 El Paso shooting, both of whose perpetrators left manifestos which mentioned environmental concerns. Writing for
i-D in December 2019,
Nathalie Olah drew parallels between XR and earlier decentralised protest movements such as the events of
May 68 in France and the
Occupy movement, suggesting that a shared lack of clarity in concrete demands had stunted the political impact of the latter two movements and arguing that climate change and class politics were "inextricable" as "a small minority are responsible for a high proportion of emissions, and because the poorest stand to face the worst repercussions".
Diversity , Indonesia, just one of the many countries represented by the organization. Ben Smoke, one of the
Stansted 15, writing in
The Guardian, criticised XR's tactic of mass arrest. He wrote for XR to casually speak of imprisonment undermines the negative experiences of incarceration on Black, Asian and minority ethnic people in the UK. He also wrote that for XR to be supporting peoples' court cases risks drawing significant "resources, time, money and energy" from the environmental movement, from the individuals involved, and which could otherwise be directed towards people most affected by climate change. Smoke instead recommended tactics that are not only the preserve of those able to afford the expense and time of arrest. He also wrote that though mass arrests may be intended to cause government to focus more on tackling climate change, it might instead cause government to increase anti-protest legislation. Some in Extinction Rebellion have also called attention to Martin Luther King Jr. (one of XR's guiding inspirations When the movement expanded to the US, a fourth demand was added to that group's list of demands: for a "just transition that prioritises the most vulnerable and indigenous sovereignty [and] establishes reparations and remediation led by and for black people, indigenous people, people of colour and poor communities for years of environmental injustice." Labour Party shadow cabinet member
Lisa Nandy criticised the organisation in
The Guardian in October 2019, saying "calls for individual action can't just be modelled on the lifestyles of middle class city dwellers".
George Monbiot has also written in
The Guardian that "Extinction Rebellion is too white, and too middle class." focused attention on class issues and led to an apology from an XR spokesman.
Alleged extremism A report called "Extremism Rebellion" by
Policy Exchange, a UK-based conservative
think tank, said that Extinction Rebellion is an extremist organisation seeking the breakdown of liberal democracy and the rule of law. It called for the criminalisation of the group's strategies, and the
Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 took recommendations directly from Policy Exchange's 2019 report. The think tank received in 2017 a $30,000 donation by US-based oil and gas corporation
ExxonMobil, to target Extinction Rebellion. In 2019, the
South East Counter Terrorism Unit police authority listed Extinction Rebellion, alongside
neo-Nazi and
Islamist terrorist groups, as a threat in a guide titled "Safeguarding young people and adults from ideological extremism". After media inquiries, they recalled and disavowed this guide, saying the presence of Extinction Rebellion was an error.
Cult allegations Extinction Rebellion has been accused of being a cult by the media, environmental activists as well as several former senior XR members. Sherrie Yeomans, coordinator of XR blockades in the English city of Bristol accused the group of being a manipulative cult and former XR spokeswoman
Zion Lights accused Roger Hallam of creating a cult by fear-mongering such as when he forced her to claim that 6 billion would die by the end of the century due to climate change and further claimed that he compared himself to a prophet. Hallam had compared climate change to the Holocaust and claimed that the climate crisis would lead to mass rape and has called for the overthrow of governments even if it results in deaths resulting in him being accused of fostering a death cult. ==Media coverage==