Last night, Andrew Neil took Extinction Rebellion spokesman Zion Lights to task over her organisation’s alarmist claims and anti-scientific arguments. Lights was taken to task over the Extinction Rebellion claim that “billions of people will die over the next few decades”, eventually admitting that what they were saying did not fall within the scientific mainstream and disclosing that “unfortunately alarmist language works.”

Extraordinarily for people who use soundbites like “listen to the scientists”, Lights ended up arguing against the scientific mainstream IPCC report, attacking it as presenting “very conservative numbers… using pre-industrial levels of data.” That’s undermining 6,000 scientific references, 91 authors, representing a global consensus with review editors from 40 countries. Lights ended up sounding like the people she purports to argue against, cherry-picking one or two eccentric researchers, against the vast scientific consensus…

Extinction Rebellion continually says “listen to the experts” but their demand of net zero emissions by 2025 directly contradicts the 2050 target that the experts are recommending.

When Neil posed the reality that in order to achieve Extinction Rebellion’s six year target, all flying would have to come to an end; all cars would have to be confiscated; meat would have to be rationed by the state; and all gas boilers and cookers would have to be removed from every home; Lights did not deny it, merely responding with the platitudinous comparison “we put a man on the moon.” The entire excruciating interview is worth watching in full.

Extinction Rebellion have escaped proper scrutiny for months, despite receiving blanket news coverage. Other broadcasters and journalists should watch this interview and take note…

Was it as a result of Neil’s interview that Corbyn deleted his tweet calling for a net zero target of just 2030? He replaced it with a tweet committing to everything the previous one did, save for that extreme 2030 pledge…