What follows is my own brief response to Achara's article.
Thank you Achara for your well-reasoned article. Despite, or perhaps because of having become an ex-participant in XR, I found it refreshing reading. Not that I have entirely repudiated XR, because I believe they have performed and continue to perform a valuable service in bringing to the attention of ordinary people things that humanity should not ignore. What is called global warming is however far more complex a matter than most people realise, and for that very reason, solutions to it are equally non-trivial. As for the means that XR employs, that is another matter, but one that raises important questions of its own, such as the place of protest and dissent, especially in what is becoming an increasingly authoritarian society world-wide, and moreover one that has not distinguished itself by clarity and honesty of leadership. The need to effectively speak truth to power without incurring the knee-jerk reaction of the Police is a matter that is going to become increasingly important in times to come, and especially in this matter of global warming. Another important matter in this connection, of course, is that of education and who controls it. So we need more and more people who are prepared, like you, to question everything that is taken unthinkingly to be true, to come to our own conclusions, and to speak without fear to those who would oppose the unfettered progress of truth.
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