Cults obey a logic of their own and do not follow the parameters of mainstream logic.
Extinction Rebellion and their apocalyptic message: Unless we do what they say and readjust to live the way they wants us to live in the next 12 years, the planet will die
Vehicle emissions pollute the air and harm the environment by adding carbon dioxide (CO2) into the air. C02 accelerates the greenhouse effects, which in turn, climate enthusiasts believe, induces conditions for catastrophic climate change.
By the protestors’ own convictions, driving more and driving longer using petrol are activities that harm the planet. The same for idling engines. So, when the blockading protestors push people to drive longer and slower around their blockades or forcing people to idle for long periods of time, they are harming the environment.
The effect of their illogical actions will not kill the planet but is not insignificant. An average modern vehicle operating normally emits about 2.4 kilograms of CO2 per liter of gasoline. Older vehicles emit even more. And there is more. There are a variety of smog-causing agents, volatile organic compounds, carbon monoxide (a poisonous gas) and various nitrogen oxides out of a tail pipe. In addition, slow-moving vehicles through congested routes at about 30 kilometres per hour spend over 10 percent more fuel while vehicles that move in a stop-and-go manner at low speeds increase upward of 47 percent.
Diesel vehicles emit about 15 per cent more than a regular gasoline engine on average.
The cumulative effect of hundreds of thousands of vehicles in Canada and millions around the world idling for extended periods of time or forced to drive longer and more slowly add millions of kilograms of pollutants and more C02 needlessly into the air. All this at a time when there supposedly exists an ecological emergency, putting out fires with gasoline.
The blockade organizers call themselves Extinction Rebellion (XR). They are secular cult zealots, calling sinners to mend their ways lest they be condemned to the fires of hell; they believe that the planet is headed toward an apocalyptic demise of our civilization unless we heed their call and stop consuming hydrocarbons. Expressing their end-of-times mentality, their symbol is an hourglass, driving the point that the planet is running out of time.
XR members see themselves conducting a “non-violent rebellion against the governments of the world for climate and ecological justice.” Their “rebellious” agenda is propelled by the radical belief that we live an “unprecedented global emergency.” “Life on Earth is in crisis.”
Their website claims “The Truth”: “Scientist agree we have entered a period of abrupt climate breakdown and we are in the midst of a mass extinction of our own making.”
Readers will recognize these words from a teenager’s famous “How Dare You” UN address, not because XR are her followers, but because she was a messenger of their radical agenda.
How radical? Radical enough that they alone hold the truth and the moral authority to save humanity. Their message is a feedback loop of beliefs, typical to closed belief systems. The words of a Halifax bridge-blockading activists, screamed at a woman riding a bicycle (!) with the circular echoes of Thunberg wrath, show how children indoctrinated into an existential angst are then used by parents as a justification for their actions: “Our children think that they should not have children. That is how much we are stealing their future.”
Extinction Rebellion’s blocking of bridges around the world aims to establish an eco-centered oligarchy: governments of the world must accept their beliefs and declare a climate and ecological emergency; the same governments must commit to slaughtering their economies to arrive to net zero emissions by 2025; and governments must submit their authority to what XR call “Citizens’ Assemblies on Climate and Ecological Justice.”
The latter demand is nothing short of a transfer of democratic power to oligarchies of frantic enviro-zealots compelled by their imagined threat of planetary doom.
XR are prepared to go to prison and, like most cults, are prepared to wreak havoc onto the world until the world meets their demands and converts, non-violently for now. But that may change. Their sense of urgency may turn in frustration to violent desperation, prompting their twisted logic to jump to vandal criminal action.
However well-meaning they may appear on the surface, we ought not too easily dismiss these enviro-zealots and their potentially dangerous disposition.