Examples include Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion here in the UK.
Personally, I think some charities are groups are genuine in their outburst wanting large firms to stop strangling the natural beauty for profit, however for me there is a red line that can be crossed.
Blocking roads preventing medical care, people going to work, interview and possibly a nice vacation away. This doesn’t really help but make the public look at your group in a bad light.
The same can also be said when attempting to destroy priceless art for a cheap publicity stunt knowing it’ll get clicks on social media.
TLDR - I think some groups are genuinely good whilst others are just shouting in a speakerphone, pissing everyone else off.
What do YOU think?
If you block emergency vehicles and someone dies or gets (more severe) injuries you should be prosecuted.
Generally the art vandalism just makes me feel aversion towards whatever your agenda is. But I’m not sure if I’m your target audience in the first place.
If you block me while I’m working, turns out I’m paid by the hour anyway. If you block me on my free time I’ll probably work up a rage and actively start opposing your agenda instead of listening on what you have to say.
Over all you’ll probably not convince me.
I have no issue with disruptive and inconvenient climate actions, I think they’re one of many valid ways to draw attention and put pressure on the people who actually make decisions about such things.
Based. Politicians only listen when people crash the economy. Direct action has the most impact by far.
I think blocking roads and publicity stunts are ineffective, but there’s plenty of actually effective stuff you can do, like tree spiking or sabotaging oil infrastructure. I don’t really care if people want to block roads or throw soup at paintings but I don’t think it’ll achieve much. I guess better than doing nothing. But with the draconian punishments people are getting in various countries for this sort of protest, it really doesn’t seem worth it when you could do something that’s also criminalised but actually directly does something to prevent climate change.
Personally I don’t like how a lot of the XR-related groups are so ideologically wedded to nonviolence, to the point where they condemn and actively oppose others on the left they deem “violent” (which is usually just racialised people who acted in self-defence at a protest). I see that as a bigger problem than ineffective protests, because they’re actively withholding solidarity from those who should be aligned with them.
You’re right, blocking traffic and other publicity stunts are not effective.
In the pursuit of self defense, any and all actions are legitimate. This includes deadly force.
They are effective, but in the other direction. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re funded by fossil fuel companies.
You’ll never be able to address climate change under capitalism- you have to push for socialism and then environmental protections. See: the percentage of renewable energy and battery storage that is being produced in China as they transition out of a mixed economy toward more worker control.
Stunts make headlines, not change. Change and fixing the problem these groups are fighting against takes work and lots of it.
I think those of us who care about our climate would be better served by larger scale collective action aimed at the profits of companies benefitting from destroying our environment. Even the groups you mentioned by name though probably couldn’t collectively agree on where to apply pressure.
We’re going to all get a lot more done if we’re willing to compromise and find common ground than all trying to do our own things. In my opinion the time for uncompromising idealism and lofty goals is past. We need targeted, specific, collective action anyone who cares to can participate in. The hurdle will be finding consensus on what specifically to apply that effort towards.
I think the causes are right. The execution is just very poor. I don’t understand what blocking traffic has to do with it, I don’t understand what throwing paint around has to do with it.
Honestly, I think protests should be a matter of information vs information and using the right information to combat the lies and deceit projected by those they’re against.
You lose traction of your cause if all that you’re doing is trying to be the biggest intolerant prick.
I didn’t like the Black Lives Matter movement, because their ranks contained people that destroyed streets and they seemed to just budge right in on everything.
I didn’t like the Stop Oil movement, because all that they did were examples of what I brought up about blocking traffic and throwing paint.
The planet is being destroyed and the politicians are not doing enough. So activists protest. That’s good! I can’t imagine being angry at climate activists for inconveniencing my day; after all, the real culprits are the politicians who don’t do enough!
I used to agree but now I do not anymore. Politicians want to get elected, so they say and impement stuff people like. If people wanted real change, then we would have politicians in power who would implement these changes. But (most) people don’t want that, they’d rather be lied to, everything is fine, we’ve got it under control, you don’t have to change, trust us, keep shopping.
When extreme climate collapse really kicks in, the average person will wish it were some protesters disrupting their commute for a few hours on a weekday vs literal breakdown of infrastructure and society indefinitely.
tl;dr: things are bad, things will get worse, be angry at the criminals, not those sounding the alarm
We’ve known what we’re in for for half a century, meanwhile governments have kept catering to fossil industries. What’s being destroyed by governmental inaction dwarfs that what you accuse these groups of (art has not been destroyed) and at this point I’m not surprised that people are looking to more disruptive and direct action.
We’ve had scientists do the researching and informing, public interest groups do litigation, NGOs trying what they can themselves, etc, yet we’re still headed to a degree of climate destabilization where large ecosystem tipping points may well launch us into uncharted territory - and even if not, we’re already past the point of ‘dangerous’ climate change and that’s something we’ll have to bear the human, societal and economic costs for.
Anyone doing anything to protest the climate or damage the profits of fossil fuel companies is fine by me. I can’t call everyones methods “efficient” but it honestly doesn’t matter to me, an extreme response to climate change is reasonable at this point.
This, I don’t live then e.g. throwing paint on painting because it seems kind of pointless, but at least it gets attention.
Painting was behind glass, the point is that in a climate change hellscape all this precious art is in danger. If all the people who read about a painting they’ve never heard of before get angry about “paint being thrown at it” they’ll really hate what’ll happen with extreme weather in a climate disaster.
That makes a lot of sense actually _ if not seen the justification posted anywhere. thanks
I don’t think they’ve ever tried to destroy art. If you’re talking about the sunflowers, they knew it was behind glass. Their whole MO is doing shocking things to get attention to the cause and to point out that these things will be gone if we don’t stop burning fossil fuels.
Both Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion are great, and protests should be disruptive, otherwise they’re just ignored. Maybe they’re not doing enough disruption and damage to force governments to listen. Or, maybe someone should go after energy/oil companies directly via sabotage or other means and cause enough economic damage that the cost of polluting and resource extraction becomes too high for them to profit from.
Climate change will cause more droughts, fires, and heat waves. Millions of people will die and be displaced.
There’s a handful of people who want to do something to prevent this, but, given our system, there’s basically nothing they can do to change the outcome. So they’re resorting to civil disobedience.
I think it’s fine. From what I’ve heard, these are mostly minor inconveniences. Given the scale of suffering they’re warning us about, the inconveniences don’t seem minor. Disrupting medical care isn’t acceptable, etc.
They’ve successfully gotten people talking about climate change, so it’s working.
they’re not violent enough I think
