Honestly, what is this road glueing good for? You are annoying people who are not the root cause and allowing news sites and trolls to make an enemy of you.
Congratulations, you really showed them.
I’m sorry, but how are daily commuters not a huge part of the cause? I recognize they’re part of a larger system, and may have limited means to fix anything, but they’re still participating in behavior that is destroying the only home we have.
There are two alternatives: activists either do nothing consequential, people like you ignore them and nothing changes, or…
There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part; you can’t even passively take part, and you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop.
- Mario Savio
You’re literally defending the moderate in the meme.
Have these protests done anything? For example that due to the lack of public transport people are obliged to use a car, or many workplaces especially office work are put around cities not inside because of tax reasons? In my case I had to use a car for my previous work, for it was 45 minutes instead of 4,5 hours with trains and buses.
These people do nothing, but scream STOP USING OIL, STUPID! and call it a day.
Nobody is oblivious to this problem, but many have few choices.
The method behind the road blocks is: Block road to hold normal people hostage -> normal people get angry and demand change -> government changes it’s policy towards your demands. Yeah everyone knows climate change to be a problem but if nothing is being done despite that you have to apply pressure somewhere, so because Fridays for future moved the needle maybe minimally, by doing normal marches, you start to be the tiniest bit annoying by blocking streets without prior warning.
The very few people getting stuck in traffic from these protest are really just innocent bystanders but, they also need to change, and both the real targets, so politicians and rich people, have enough influence to easily shield themselves from the effect of protests, apart from maybe the private yet stoppages which the same groups also organised.
And at least here in Germany the media coverage about climate change is now much more frequent than before LG started blocking the streets. And the coverage is only interspersed by talking about the protests themselves not singularly about the protests. So there is at least some noticeable change.
These people don’t do nothing, they are fighting for my right to live 60 more years in relative peace and prosperity, protests and civil disobedience is far from doing nothing. The political message that gets told whenever any of them is interviewed is certainly much more nuanced than the slogan as well. And the reason they are on the street to begin with is because they themselves also have few choices, if the people going out to the street had power apart from their time and body they would be and are using it towards that same goal, but obviously their power via other ways is insufficient.
All in all if you think you act efficiently and fairly towards climate change reversal/reduction, but write a comment defending your 45min car commute, you might be missing something.The lack of public transport in your city for example isn’t solved by just continuing to use it without reflection about why it is that way, and honest investment into fixing it.
I just don’t see the point. What is “consequential” about shutting down a road? What are you trying to achieve exactly? Are you doing it just because it’s beneficial in and of itself? Shutting down one road out of the millions on Earth for like an hour does practically nothing and you should spend your time more wisely. Are you trying to win hearts and minds? People will do far more than just ignore your cause, they will actively despise it. Or is it just out of spite for commuters? Even though many of them, as you said, have limited means to change anything. Not everyone can afford to just quit their job to get one closer.
They are bringing awareness to the cause. Yes they are annoying the fuck of “innocent bystanders” but if they went on to a street and handed out flyers they would do fuck all, because people would just ignore them.
Plus this is not a “us” vs “them”. It’s not like they want to save “their” planet. There’s only one earth last I checked. So people might be angry about it, many will just laugh and say it’s stupid, others will join the cause and/or demand change.
People think they are so smart to ridicule them for throwing food at some paintings but they just want to feel better about themselves about not doing anything. So they criticize them to hide that discomfort. “If what they are doing is stupid, then I won’t feel bad for not doing it.”
I ask you? What do you suggest they do instead? And then go a check because for sure they did it and either it didn’t do shit or they are still doing it.
It would also kind of go against their own point if public transit was also stopped. Sometimes you can’t just live near absolutely everything. Some people have disabilities and cannot physically ride a bike to get where they need to go. That would maybe also encourage people to take a car or a carpool, where they’re more likely to be able to do a u turn.
I’m sorry, but how are daily commuters not a huge part of the cause?
But daily commuters aren’t really the problem in itself, it’s the combustion engine cars. Blocking road also blocks people in EVs or even the ones taking the bus.
Keeping everything else the same but switching to EV is still really bad for the environment and bad for people.
It’d be much more interesting and impactful to do something like espionage on oil wells or pipelines. Hurt the profits of the companies forcing it rather than everything stuck in a bad system.
They would just raise the prices of the oil they had to make up for it… for about twice as long as necessary. So they’ll make more money, and we’ll likely end up with a giant mess.
You can spread awareness without assaulting others, which tend to be the route for many activists.
Agression generates defensive reactions. If you question a person, patiently, pick at their knowledge or lack of it, you can create a change.
Approaching someone and calling them monsters because don’t do this or do that is not a good conversation starter.
What do you mean? I primarily see people taking direct action, and then people complain and say “I agree that this is a problem, but don’t protest in this way”.
I bet you have the same problems with blocking roads as you do with welding oil pipeline flow control valves shut or storming a coal plant.
No problem whatsoever with that.
My problem is that usually only foments violence - against the protesters - and distrust against the cause.
Agression generates defensive reactions. If you question a person, patiently, pick at their knowledge or lack of it, you can create a change.
Literally ALL of history disagrees with you.
Are you proposing we implement change via war? No. Enough of that for the last, lets say, 10.000 years. How about we start getting our collective heads out of our asses and force change the right way?
The politians are crooked? Vote them out. No good option? Lets form another partie. Create lobby groups. Well organized, backed by science and data, not neo anarchist/hippie groups that think playing drums is a form of protest. Propose alternatives, force good and true information onto the public. Denounce mal practice, corruption and other bad actors behaviours, file actions against them.
What good violent protest turned out? People arrested by the hundreds, assaulted by police, killed.
It hurts a lot more a company or companies to have good unions and general strikes than violent protests in the streets.
Do you know what, it’s easier to just refer you back to the top comment on this post, since you clearly are the moderate in question, more concerned with the appearance of justice (and your own privileged comfort) than you are with actual justice.
The sad thing is you probably would never consider yourself a bootlicker, yet here you are, vigorously licking that capitalism boot that’s stood on all our necks.
Well done?
(E: and yes, I could provide you with endless links to articles and literature on the topic, but I have better things to do with my time than to waste it on someone who clearly isn’t ready (or capable?) to set their bias aside and actually look these things up for themselves instead of pretending like nothing is real that makes you uncomfortable)
If you question a person, patiently, pick at their knowledge or lack of it, you can create a change.
In which universe, exactly? Certainly not in the one I inhabit. At least not at any real scale.
Gluing yourself to roads (and damaging pieces of art) is the pinnacle of useless or even counterproductive activism.
You annoy everybody including those who agree with you. With a message that is new to nobody.
You bring no new argument or information to the table that could possibly convince those who don’t agree with you.
You are literally sitting around doing nothing.
This is not activism, this is passivism.
It also does not help, when you fly to the maldives on vacation right afterwards or do other similar schizo things.
No, it is activism. It actively draws more attention to these causes, because attention drawing things like gluing yourself to a road attract the media to report on it. Sadly, if everyone just passively protests, it is not enough anymore.
Also, gluing yourself to the road that keeps the machines contributing to global warming from running on it is kind of the point.
Being nice doesn’t work anymore. The world is actively burning. If anything, activists should be even more pissed than this, and angry at their leaders/elders for denying global warming.
What do you want them to do instead?
Just Stop Oil aren’t coming with a message, they’re coming with a demand. A very simple one that the science and international bodies are clear on.
They’ve had hundreds of media appearances, are regularly referenced by politicians and have hundreds of people getting involved (and often arrested).
In the short time they’ve been going they’ve achieved more than any orgs like Greenpeace etc.
“This is not activism, this is passivism” What a joke. Putting your body on the line, getting a criminal record is passivism? Do tell us what activism you’re doing if that isn’t.
“when you fly to the maldives on vacation right afterwards” Been hooked in by the right wing media good and proper.
No artwork was harmed.
redox reactions involve large amounts of energy being converted. These reactions can be made to happen at a very high rate. Two options for this would be to increase contact area between reductant and oxidizer, usually environmental oxygen, by grinding the reductant into a fine powder or you increase the temperature, as a rule of thumb, an increase in 10K (=10°C) is said to increase the reaction time by a factor of two. A good way to increase temperature is to confine gases inside a solid container, like a metal pipe, since a gas’ temperature is inversely proportional to its volume.
it’s not about convincing anyone anymore. we’re well beyond that point. those who are not convinced can get fucked now. we need drastic action and it’s not happening. disrupting the function of society to demand change is effective.
People in my social circle defending stuff like this will say “it was worth it for the attention it got” and that’s that. No further inquiry needed.
Which is insane, people will turn against the cause instead of joining it.
You have to ask yourself what kind of person you are to turn against the “cause” of preventing societal collapse because you got inconvenienced for 10 minutes.
If you won’t care about the issue because it’s too inconvenient to think about it, then the issue must become more inconvenient for you.
Protests are not about quietly holding placards and being easily ignored. They’re about disruption. If you’re not being disrupted, you get to ignore the protest.
That’s why I protest by walking into people’s homes when they are at work and shitting in their kitchen sinks. Then I leave a pamphlet explaining climate change next to it. They think about climate change while they clean it and change their voting patterns the next day I imagine.
And how will that disrupt things to the point of getting their attention?
Liberals have a massive problem with connecting with the general public. They seem to pick all the worst ways to try to further their cause. They picks methods to protest that end up turning off people who would otherwise side with their cause.
You pick rush hour traffic when people are exhausted and simply trying to get home to block entire highways to protest environmental causes?? Really? You thought that would endear your cause to these people who are now stuck there? All you are doing is building anger and resentment. A few months back, there was some guy who needed to meet with his parole officer within a certain amount of time. He was stuck in this intentionally created traffic jam. If he was late for his meeting for any reason, he would be thrown back in prison. He was pleading with the protestors to let him go and they wouldn’t budge.
Similar deal with groups like PETA. They always have this in-your-face attitude that gets under people’s skin. I think most people would consider themselves animal lovers, so how does an organization supposed aimed at the ethical treatment of animals screw up their messaging so badly? That organization always finds the worst ways to spread their message. There was that story months back on how they essentially stole some homeless guy’s dog. The poor guy had no other possessions and clearly cared for his companion, and yet they took the dog away from him because he wasn’t able to give it the home that they felt it deserved. What an absolute douchebag move and if I recall correctly the authorities sided with the guy and he got his dog back. But why would you do that? You cause more harm than good.
Causing more harm than good is a common theme amongst many of these left-leaning organizations. It is very frustrating to watch since to a large degree I, as well as many others, would tend to agree with the general theme of what the organization is trying to do. Just don’t do it that way.
isn’t it pretty well known fact that the group throwing paint and blocking traffic is being funded by Oil?
seems like Astroturfing more than real protest.
The granddaughter of oil tycoon J. Paul Getty is publicly showing her support for the attention-grabbing protests carried out by Just Stop Oil activists in museums.