five years after its launch in France, a failure?

The environmental activist group Extinction Rebellion (XR) had four major demands: honest communication on ecology, carbon neutrality in 2025, an end to the destruction of ecosystems and the emergence of a citizens' assembly. He failed to impose them on the French political agenda. Has XR turned into an empty shell?

Between 2019 and 2022, I became involved as an activist-researcher in the catastrophist environmental group imported to France from the United Kingdom. Since its launch, the four objectives it set for itself have not been achieved.

The ecological crisis is worsening in many regions of the world, including the national territory, as the recent floods of October 2024 in several departments have shown. Despite this, the budget proposed by Michel Barnier's government – ​​before being censored – intended to cut back on the budget dedicated to the ecological transition by reducing aid for thermal renovation (MaPrimeRénov) and Green fund.

If we have so far escaped it, this umpteenth setback in ecological policy can be read as a failure of the actions carried out by environmental groups for several years.

In particular Extinction Rebellion (XR) which, five years after its launch in France, has not managed to have its demands recognized or applied either by the government or by the media and businesses.

My research work carried out alongside activists between 2019 and 2022 aims to provide answers to their disappointed hopes.

XR carries four major demands in France, imported from England where the environmental group was founded in 2018:

• honest communication on ecology and climate change,

• carbon neutrality in 2025,

• the immediate cessation of the destruction of oceanic and terrestrial ecosystems,

• and the creation of a citizens' assembly responsible for deciding on measures to achieve these objectives and guaranteeing a just and equitable transition.

All now seem doomed to failure.

A visible but criminalized ecology

XR intended to gain institutional recognition of the seriousness and urgency of current ecological crises. To do this, the environmental group recruited into its ranks a number of cultural and intellectual professions:

An activist nicknamed Reauthoto, with whom I spoke as part of my research work, notes this himself:

“We all come from the same social background, clearly. We all did BAC+3 or BAC+5. We are architects, engineers, or we have attended art, biology and medicine schools. There you go, we still had higher education. There are very few BEPs. »

However, their activist strategy of scientific awareness and media communication has not borne fruit, at least not to the level hoped for.

At issue, in particular, is the belief that scientific arguments are enough to make political and economic decision-makers listen to reason.

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Failing to declare the expected “state of climate emergency”, the government and the dominant media have, on the contrary, mainly criminalized the actions of XR. The former Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin, for example, described, in 2022, the demonstrations against the construction of mega-basins in Sainte-Soline as “eco-terrorist”.

More recently, he confirmed, in the Télématin program on Monday July 29, 2024, during the first events of the Paris Olympic Games, the arrest of “around fifty […] of people who, with others, around 150, wanted to carry out actions of sabotage or radical protest. » Among these, according to Le Parisien, 44 XR activists.

Suffice to say that the State communicates well on the ecological context, but not in the sense that XR intended.

2025: goodbye carbon neutrality?

Regarding the second demand (carbon neutrality in 2025), greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have indeed decreased since the creation of XR. According to the government, this reduction in France is estimated at 5.3% in the first quarter of 2024 compared to the same period in 2023.

Some mixed good news: more than half of the country's GHG emissions remain delocalized or externalized, that is to say emitted outside France, in countries where environmental legislation is less restrictive.

In the general public version of the annual report of the High Climate Council (HCC) published in September 2023, we can also read:

“France's carbon footprint, which includes emissions generated in other countries to produce goods that are imported and consumed in France, is 1.5 times higher than emissions produced on French territory. »

This footprint primarily concerns the transport, agriculture (livestock breeding) or construction and building industry sectors.

This is precisely what these activists have been able to denounce on numerous occasions through their actions. One of their campaigns, entitled “End of construction sites”, targeted, from 2020, the French construction materials company Lafarge-Holcim.

However, in its national low carbon strategy (SNBC), introduced in 2015 by the law relating to the energy transition for green growth (LTECV), the government pushed back the carbon neutrality objectives to 2050.

As we arrive at the start of 2025, this second demand seems to remain a dead letter.

Always more ecocidal projects

The third demand demanded an immediate halt to the destruction of ocean and land ecosystems. An interactive map of the struggles against large unnecessary and imposed projects (GPII), initiated in 2020 by the media Reporterrelists the new local struggles and indicates that there too, XR has not achieved its goals.

Its activists also participate in some of them. Various local groups take part in an intercoordination called “L’eau rage ronde” which brings together several collectives around the defense of water. We found it in the demonstrations against megabasins.

Likewise, the local group XR Toulouse recently mobilized against construction work on the A69 motorway between Toulouse and Castres, to no avail so far.

These protest activities prove insufficient to put an end to the much-maligned global destruction. None of their main campaigns have succeeded in triggering profound institutional, political or economic changes in this direction over the past five years.

Despite this, XR continues – in vain? – this third claim.

The failure of the only attempt at a citizens' assembly

Finally, the last demand, aimed at bringing about a citizens' assembly, also turns out to be a thing of the past since the unfortunate experience of the Citizens' Climate Convention (CCC).

This is what an activist nicknamed Ikunat expresses with regret:

“There, for me, what happened with the Citizens’ Convention for the Climate, it was a pretty shattering example of why it doesn’t work […] We see that we are facing a government, and within it, a legislative power, which has automatically ruled out the strongest measures. We know that they were essential to try to take a step forward, at least in terms of mentality and regulation of companies in this area. »

As a reminder, the CCC consisted of an assembly of 150 volunteer citizens drawn at random from the French population. It was formed in October 2019 by the Economic, Social and Environmental Council (CESE) at the request of the then Prime Minister Édouard Philippe. This system resulted in the formulation of 149 proposals in a final report published in June 2021.

Despite the President of the Republic's commitment to retain all but three of them, the main flagship measures ended up being set aside. The government ultimately only took up “without filter” 10 of these proposals in its “climate and resilience law”.

Radical ecology

From now on, XR activists still active are trying to maintain what can now be called an empty shell.

This nevertheless provides them with an intense emotional bond by serving as an “emotional community” – according to the expression of sociologist Max Weber – around a common catastrophic imagination.

Since then, the ecological group Earth Uprisings, created in January 2021 by activists drawing organizational and strategic lessons from their experiences of failure (notably with XR), has continued to attract “disappointed rebels” during of its acts of mobilization.

From this brand new synthesis comes a transition to a radical ecology which reconnects with the original meaning of this protest, as it was initiated in the 1960s and 70s.