No we don’t, this disruptive behavior just makes people angry against you, it doesn’t do anything for your goals, even if you have good intentions.
Unfortunately, being angry for our cause is better than being apathetic towards our cause, so we’ll take what we can get while the planet melts and ecosystems die.
I really disagree with this premise.
For example, where I’ve worked, I’ve generally found it easy to make improvements that solely benefit the environment, even though they are virtually always more expensive and carry no other advantages, and often additional disadvantages.
Since the more recent protests, though, and especially after we all nearly lost our jobs due to the antics of a handful of protestors, that support has just gone. Being greener is no longer and end unto itself, and people don’t want to either be seen as supporting their cause or ‘helping’ the people who cause real problems for everyday people.
It may not be logical, but even I am quieter about my environmentism because I don’t really want to be associated with people who proudly block ambulances and cause pain for thousands of regular people.
Because ultimately, nobody’s going to ‘just stop’. We’re not here due to the scheming of a few people, there are a lot of reasons oil is currently so ubiquitous, and fixing it is going to be a fairly gradual process. Fortunately, oil isn’t the only way we can fix emissions, and so progress over spans of a decade or two, when that progress is going in parallel, can yield dramatic results.
My concern is that antics like these are going to slow or even reverse some of the political will to suffer the short term pain required to make these changes as quickly as we need.
Blocking the ambulance was unfortunate but they had glued themselves to the road prior to its arrival and it simply did a u-turn and carried on and the passenger was fine. It’s not like they set out to block emergency vehicles on purpose.
Meanwhile:
In 2018, more than 8 million people died from the pollution caused by coal, oil, gas, and other fossil fuels. That accounts for nearly 1-in-5 of all deaths worldwide.
So on one hand we got people being inconvenienced and ultimately being fine, and on the other hand 5,749 people have died in the 6 hours since I originally commented here…
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0013935121000487
Nobody being angry at you even listens to your course thatd the point.
Its like spitting in someone’s face and telling them their shoes are untied.
Protests are likely older than your last name, and have worked about as long.
You can tell kinda in the same way you can tell unions work. The people theyre meant to be used against get reeeeeaal agitated when they start happening.
It’s not like that at all, though. It’s like interrupting a large games event to protest drilling for oil. No one has been spat on, and it’s about something much more important than shoelaces.
I disagree, some people get angry and then think about ways to make it stop, which gets them thinking about why people are doing the protests in the first place.
