Informit article: Resisting the climate Leviathan

Emergency climate politics and the state of exception

In May 2019 the UK parliament passed an extraordinary bipartisan national Environmental and Climate Emergency Declaration. Following weeks of protests by Extinction Rebellion (XR), which brought London to a standstill with its calls for the declaration of a climate emergency, the UK parliament heeded XR’s demands in its declaration. This signals a shift in the workings of twenty-first-century politics, framed significantly by challenges of sustainability under the looming cloud of climate crises and disasters. The United Kingdom’s was the first national declaration of a climate emergency, following the lead of approximately 888 local councils around the world that had listened to the militant and radical activism of local climate-emergency movements.