This week, another round of high-profile Extinction Rebellion (XR) protests began in Britain. In London, climate activists intend on a ten-day occupation of Parliament Square, as politicians return to vote on the Climate and Ecological Emergency Bill (CEE).

The CEE bill will be moved by Caroline Lucas MP, the Green Party’s sole representative in the House of Commons. It cites two objectives: to “ensure that the UK plays its role in limiting global temperature to 1.5 degrees centigrade” and to “actively conserve the natural world.” The key difference between this bill and other climate emergency motions is that it proposes a Citizens’ Assembly, a consultative group of individuals selected from the general population, with the intention of being representative of the wider citizenry.

The bill warns of a “yellow vest effect,” alluding to a similar initiative in France. There, however, President Emmanuel Macron has accepted just 3 out of the 149 recommendations from a citizens’ commission following the gilets jaunes protests. Although such deliberative democracy has been praised in Ireland, for example — paving the way for its reproductive rights referendum — it contains an assumption that solutions could be found inside the context of our current neoliberal capitalism, so long as the discussion was participatory enough.