Rebellion on the Largest Scale - By: Tyler Whitney 1

are states and multi-national corporations, which have Rebellion on the Largest narrowly constrained interests and agendas that revolve around competition. There is an important difference here Scale between an international context and a global context. An international context conjures up an image of clearly By: Tyler Whitney delineated countries on a map. A Canadian problem ends at the Canadian boundary, and so on. Climate change, 10/21/2019 being a global issue, invokes an image such as the one above: the earth, or globe, as a single unit of analysis.

The global scale brings with it the notion of a global identity. The name of the organization, Extinction Rebellion, implies an all-inclusive identity and purpose: ‘We are rebelling against forces that will make us extinct.’ In the article linked above, notice how one protester says: “It is human… we are here as human beings.” Another said: “We are out of time” (italics added). What is the difference between a global citizen and an American citizen? Can you be both? Ironically, engendering an idea of global citizenship may be pivotal to holding more local and national governments accountable for global consequences.

Earth seen from Apollo 17

By: Tyler Whitney Last week, thousands of demonstrators blocked traffic and glued themselves to cars to protest inaction towards climate change. Unlike your average protest, these demonstrators coordinated to protest in different locations throughout the globe. This is a story of the global scale, perhaps the trickiest scale in geopolitics.

The organization called Extinction Rebellion is conducting protest activities in population centers across the globe, including New Delhi, London, New York, and Amsterdam. Climate change activists face two challenges, both of which are rooted in the concept of scales. First, is a problem of perception. CO2 emissions, while having global consequences, are framed as being a local, regional, or national act. Local governments reacted inconsistently to the different situations presented by the globally-organized protestors. There is also varying gravity with which different governments treat climate change. Extinction Rebellion will face great difficulty redirecting people’s attention to a larger scale. Protests may be coordinated globally, but the responses are dependent on each individual government. The second problem is the question of who holds the agency: who can and should address climate change? There is no global geopolitical entity that can enforce or incentivize a resolution to the crisis. The most powerful agents