Extinction Rebellion (abbreviated as XR) is a UK-founded global environmental movement,[10][11] with the stated aim of using nonviolent civil disobedience to compel government action to avoid tipping points in the climate system, biodiversity loss, and the risk of social and ecological collapse.

[8][12][13] Extinction Rebellion was established in Stroud in May 2018 by Gail Bradbrook,[14][15][16] Simon Bramwell,[1] Roger Hallam, Stuart Basden, along with six other co-founders from the campaign group Rising Up!

[49] It is associated with Camino to Cop26, a women-run faith group that walked 500 miles to the COP26 conference in Glasgow to protest world leaders' lack of action on climate change.

[50][51] Extinction Rebellion originated in the United Kingdom at a meeting of activists including Gail Bradbrook, Roger Hallam and Simon Bramwell in April 2018, at which they drew up a number of goals.

[42] On 5 October 2021, the group blocked streets in Zurich, Switzerland, demanding that the Swiss government take measures to address climate change in the country.

[62] In September 2024, activists from Extinction Rebellion covered the Finnish Parliament House in red paint, which according to testers, may not be able to be removed without damage.

[66][67][68] In Britain in 2021, some campaigners considered that XR was being ignored by government (except for legislating against protests) and no longer had the effect needed to create real change, so other groups were formed with the idea of using mass disruption and arrest to draw attention to a very specific demand.

[74] On 12 April over 30 protesters appeared in court, each charged with being a public assembly participant failing to comply with a condition imposed by a senior police officer at various locations on various dates.

[78] On 16 November 2023, a jury acquitted nine members of XR who together had caused £500,000 worth of criminal damage to the windows of the London headquarters of HSBC bank two years prior as a climate protest.

[79][80] During the "International Rebellion", which started on 15 April 2019, actions and messages of support arrived from various sources, including a speech by actress Emma Thompson, a planned visit by school strike leader Greta Thunberg, and statements from former NASA scientist James Hansen and linguist and activist Noam Chomsky.

[81] A study conducted during the first two days of the mid-April London occupation, polling 1539 participants, found that 46% of respondents supported the rebellion;[82] however, an opinion poll of 3482 British adults in October 2019 found that support was lower and that 54% of respondents strongly or somewhat opposed actions aiming to "shut down London"[83] The protests on 17 April had blocked access to means of transport including buses, alienating travellers.

[84][85] In May 2019, Roger Hallam and eight others stood as candidates in the European Parliament elections in the London and the South West England constituencies as Climate Emergency Independents.

[88][89] In June 2019, 1,000 healthcare professionals in the UK and elsewhere, including professors, public health figures, and former presidents of royal colleges, called for widespread non-violent civil disobedience in response to "woefully inadequate" government policies on the unfolding ecological emergency.

[90] In July 2019, Trevor Neilson, Rory Kennedy and Aileen Getty launched the Climate Emergency Fund (CEF),[52][91] inspired by Greta Thunberg and Extinction Rebellion protesters in the UK in April.

[99][100] On 6 February 2020, the environmental organization Mobilize Earth debuted Guardians of Life, the first of twelve short films that highlight the most pressing issues facing humanity and the natural world.

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.

[109] 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".

[124] 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".

[124] Priti Patel, who advocated for the aforementioned policing bill, defended the decision to designate Extinction Rebellion as an extremist group after the guide was disavowed.

[124] In 2023, BBC News reported that climate activists were being referred to the Prevent strategy, a counterterrorism scheme aimed at identifying extremists who may become violent.

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".

[128] 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".

[129] 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.

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.

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.

While Extinction and Guardians of Life declare 'nonviolent open rebellion' and the urge to action for the survival of our natural world, the divergence between their stated ideals and their disruptive tactics in shaping public understanding of climate-related issues point toward starkly opposite directions.

Despite their alleged advocacy of environmental issues, the involvement of such movie stars as Emma Thompson or Joaquin Phoenix redirects attention to their celebrity status, eclipsing the focus on the ecological solutions they should represent.

Thus, these films can be viewed as nothing more than glossy facades, effectively disguising the radical environmental actions of XR activists under a more inclusive, media-friendly veneer.