If you’re not disrupting anything, your protest will invariably be ignored.
The “I support the right to protest as long as it doesn’t inconvenience anyone” reeks of a “negative peace” ploy to stifle dissent while appearing to be reasonable in the eyes of other Enlightened Centrist hypocrites.
Then they should disrupt pollution rather than something totally unrelated.
Again, that’s bullshit. If they “disrupt pollution” by for example peacefully protesting at an oil rig, they risk life in prison on terrorism charges since that’s how insane the laws are, in exchange for little to no media attention.
At a pro tennis event in Washington DC, on the other hand, the media is already there, peaceful protest isn’t called terrorism and due to the location, there’s an excellent chance that some of the very representatives who are standing in the way of climate action or at least someone from their inner circle are actually THERE.
TL;DR: You seem to either have no clue what you’re talking about or be exactly like the negative peace demanders that held back MLK and his fight for justice.
Protesting an oil rig is always going to be peroformative, even if that one rig is shut down there are tens of thousands of petroleum extraction sites that will be unaffected, the total production would be unaffected.
However there are less than 900 patrolium refineries in the world. There is not enough refinery capasity to make up for any disruption to one of the largest refineries.
If they “disrupt pollution” by for example peacefully protesting at an oil rig, they risk life in prison on terrorism charges since that’s how insane the laws are, in exchange for little to no media attention
And there’s a reason that actual disruption is illegal, and performative nonsense carries lighter consequences. The reason is that oil companies absolutely LOVE for protests to be ineffectual and just cause disruptions among leftists. Obviously these “gluing myself to stuff” protests have NOT helped the environment. Nobody ever actually thought they would.
No. The reason is that the politicians are corrupt as fuck and oil companies have a lot of money to bribe them with. Also, the vast majority of the politicians are fascists who hate protesters and neoliberals who pretend to be their allies but prefer order to justice when it comes down to it.
You clearly have no clue about how protest works today a opposed to 60s to 90s. Media attention is the number one thing that you need to be able to inspire systemic change. Attention that you mostly get via what you so ignorantly call “performative nonsense” while advocating for sacrificing everything to further the cause only very little if at all.
You can’t change the conversation without inconveniencing someone people and you can’t change the system without first changing the conversation.
No. The reason is that the politicians are corrupt as fuck and oil companies have a lot of money to bribe them with. Also, the vast majority of the politicians are fascists who hate protesters and neoliberals who pretend to be their allies but prefer order to justice when it comes down to it.
That’s exactly what I said. The corrupt politicians will punish actual protests and go light on ineffectual protests (gluing oneself to items) because the oil companies love ineffectual protests and want to punish effective protests.
Attention that you mostly get via what you so ignorantly call “performative nonsense” while advocating for sacrificing everything to further the cause only very little if at all.
This has NOT led to more attention for environmentalism. It has only led to people speaking negatively about people who glue themselves to items. It has not led people to talk more about the environment. In fact it distracts people from the environment and works in the favor of oil companies.
You can’t change the conversation without inconveniencing someone people
But a protest must do more than merely inconvenience some people… especially when it only inconveniences normal people who might already agree with you but don’t have much power. It’s clearly just narcissistic attention-grabbing for their own egos.
you can’t change the system without first changing the conversation.
If the conversation has been changed, it’s been to distract from environmentalism and put focus on the warped egos of a few fools who glue themselves to things. 100% counterproductive.
You’ve said nothing of substance. And these protests have no substance.
Actually, it pushes the envelope. People making sacrifices makes the best kind of point to other people.
The Arab spring comes to mind.
Was that man also an idiot who didn’t inspire anything?
At some point, the spark will catch.
It depends on the protest. You can’t just do a random thing and expect people to get inspired. Gluing yourself to something makes you look foolish. Not inspiring. Blocking traffic is actually related to the problem, so it can start a spark.
Some of the best environmentist protestors are the ones who chain themselves to trees to stop old growth logging. These are excellent and passionate protests.
The glue and paintings nonsense works against this. It’s stupid and distracting and discouraging.
Brief disruption of a single large-scale pollutant out of a million more just like it, before being thrown in jail for decades on terrorism charges, is not “actual disruption”. Statistically it doesn’t even rise above random noise in terms of effect, and people would hate them more, not less. They would be branded violent terrorists trying to destroy our infrastructure. You would be sacrificing everything and all other forms of effectiveness to have the tiniest, barely-detectable impact on the root issue.
The problem is systemic, and so must be the solution. You cannot break a system by destroying one of a million nodes in the system. If we had the power to stop this via direct action, we would have already long been capable of solving this with political action well before that point.
Nah, but if you did more disrupting , they could stop annoying you.
They tried being acceptable, and nobody listens. Now they are being unacceptable, and still nobody listens.
So what should they do?
I don’t have the answer to that question.
You ever see The Last Starfighter?
Get better PR
Oh and maybe vote.
Imo anyone who complains about anything in a democratic nation but won’t vote deserves to be ignored.
In a lot of places, the authorities make it hard for people who aren’t living in right-wing areas to vote Things like limiting the number of poll workers effectively cap the number of votes from some areas, even though more voters there want to vote.
Yeah, I’m talking about the ones who can’t be assed to vote, not the ones who are prevented from voting
They look the same in a lot of cases. Make it hard to vote, tell people they’ll need to take time off from work, stand for hours in line, or find a polling place that’s new and not announced until just before the day of the vote, and people won’t bother to try.
Make it easy to vote, and a lot more people do.
There’s a massive gap between the disenfranchisement happening in the South and other parts of the country, and people who without incredible effort can vote, but don’t.
You’re talking about “a lot of cases”, sure, whatever, I’m talking about “the rest of the cases”. Which is a lot, maybe even a majority, of the massive numbers of environmentalists who don’t vote.
It’s not that they can’t, it’s not that they’re suppressed, these people just DON’T.
This is what they write on the website you linked to:
1,487,733 of the 9,542,183 million non-voting and seldom-voting environmentalists whom EVP has communicated with since the fall of 2015 are now consistent super-voters who vote in every election, big and small.
All in all there are about 139,398,590 environmentalists in the USA (41% of Americans identify themselves as “environmentalists”).
How do you know that climate protestors aren’t in the big group of environmentalists who vote?
Why do you think specifically climate protestors don’t vote?
Statistics don’t lie.
https://environment.harvard.edu/news/how-do-you-get-environmentalists-actually-vote
For one, the article you link to is about Americans. At least the ones in the photo are not Americans, that was in UK.
Additionally, this “Environmental Voter Project” is about everyone who is interested in a greener politics. It’s not about climate protestors.
The US and EU have both shifted significantly towards decarbonization. It’s not fast enough, but it’s getting started.
I’m annoyed by over critical analysis of nonviolent protest tactics, rather than substantive conversation about why they’re protesting in the first place.
For anyone annoyed by climate activists: wake the hell up. LISTEN to the message.
We are on course for an UNLIVABLE FUTURE. A BILLION climate refugees, mass crop failures, cities under water, temperatures too hot for human survival. Economic and societal collapse.
These disruptions damage nothing and inconvenience a small amount of people for 5-30 minutes. It’s not a big deal. In a world of reactionary social media and news, these are the tactics that get attention. It is not the activist’s fault for how the media reports it.
This is not “their cause”. This is the fight for everything we know and love.
If you don’t like what they’re doing, start doing what you think works.
bUt We jUsT wANT to WaTcH tENniS
You’ll get your fucking tennis when we start killing each other for food. Human brains are incapable of comprehending what we are continuing to do to our future. Its so fucking frustrating seeing this society being completely oblivious to the tortures we could’ve avoided by relatively small changes 60 years ago and which we still can lessen by doing something now.
buT iM GoNna gEt a TeSla fOr my NeXt Car
You won’t get anyone not already convinced to listen to your message if the people are hung up on hating what you’re doing and thinking you’re a moron.
It just seems like a bad way to reach or convince anyone.
Not really true, the evidence shows the popularity of the group may go down but concern over the issue goes up.
Tell us a better way that hasn’t already been tried, one that’s proportional to the urgency. Genuinely open to ideas.
The suffragettes were more than annoying, they blew stuff up and burnt down buildings and they were effective.
I would be interested in this evidence. I don’t think there’s been a whole lot of time to study these more ideotic hand glue and ruining paintings stunts but at least short term effects should be something that can be studied.
When is it appropriate for climate protests to turn into climate violence? When is it appropriate for a victim to fight back? Or must we allow billionaires and conservatives to kill us all?
to answer your questions:
- now
- now
- no
Doesn’t matter if it’s appropriate. It’s not actually feasible right now.
I think it’s feasible anytime anyone does it.
Probably achieve a bit of a copy cat effect as well.
Sure it is. Go get em, tiger.
When will it get feasible? Things will just keep getting worse and by the time people decide to fight back it will be too late
Answered your own question.
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Sounds more like he never actually accomplished anything except some prison time
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Can’t incite a revolution (lol) by staying under the radar.
Like I said, it’s not feasible. It’s a pipe dream. Grow up and start doing the hard, boring, effective work.
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The hard, boring, effective work is thankfully already being done
…no, it’s not. Not enough of it.
Stop being performative and go volunteer to coordinate a voter drive.
make it more expensive for them to continue,
This requires choosing better targets for the protests.
People in this thread are arguing that any kind of violence or inconvenience automatically helps the cause. But no. We’re just inconveniencing each other and distracting each other from… environmental issues.
The only reason to take part in protests that don’t target polluters is to look cool for your friends.
These protests have no connection to the issue. I honestly think many of them are paid by oil companies to make the environmental movement look bad.
Stopping personal traffic by blocking cars and being “annoying” in places that often are lit for no reason through entire nights are both protests very close to the issue.
Very interesting! I hadn’t thought of that.
Victims? They are the reason behind the climate change!
Um. What?
The victims of climate change are the normal people who are prevented from doing anything to stop it.
Conservatives have worked hard for decades to make sure normal people are not able to curtail climate change in any way. There is a clear villain in the story of how we are being killed. It is conservatives.
Wut? Enough with conspiracy theories already!
K. Now, run along back to Truth Social! The cafeteria lady is about to scrape the skin off the pudding!
TIL reality is a conspiracy.
Thought you people love conspiracy theories
I hope for your sake that you don’t live near the sea, or anywhere with many trees…
I get the point of the question, but frankly, I think climate protestors can do whatever they want as long as Big Oil can do whatever it wants. It’s way more annoying having my planet ruined.
Yes, all us Lambs must march quietly and obediently to the slaughter.
I’d say climate destroyers should be less destructive.
Of course they’re whiny; they’re literally begging for their lives. What would people prefer instead, Ted Turner to run around in tight spandex, throwing people out of windows and screaming “Captain Planeeeet!?”
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And with “less annoying”, of course they mean “powerless”.
The problem I have with groups doing things like the throwing soup in a painting thing or other annoying activities is how can we be sure these people weren’t paid to make the cause look bad? It wouldn’t be the first or last time something like that happens where someone will be paid to make a cause look bad.
If and when protests turn violent because people are desperate and there’s nothing else left you’ll realise how innocuous these types of protests are. They hurt nobody, disrupt people for a very short time and get the message out there.
This idea that it’s funded by big oil is just ridiculous. I am in activism and I know people from JSO, they are some of the kindest and caring people you could meet. They understand the urgency of the crisis and are willing to their bodies and freedom on the line to get the message out. Being popular is not their goal, they get people talking and that is undeniable.
@raginghummus @AceFuzzLord @climate
Good job that being popular isn’t their primary goal because they won’t be fairly treated by the popular press (where many folk get their opinions from)
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Judging by the foolishness of unfocused anger I see on reddit, tumblr, twitter, etc… I think it’s very likely they’re just incredibly stupid but well meaning people.
See also: “vote 3rd party”, “oh you eat meat you must like torturing animals”, “we should literally ban all cars” etc
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And eating meat is literally torturing and killing animals.
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Here we go
- No, you shouldn’t vote third party in America, or any country with a first-past-the-post system captured by a duopoly, because it flies in the face of the reality of game theory. Tactical voting is real, no matter how upset the idea makes people. Yes, this even includes deep-red and deep-blue states, or whatever your country’s equivalent is.
- Yes, choosing to eat meat when you have alternatives means you place your convenience and consumption above the death of sentient and pain-feeling creatures. I think it’s bad to cause harm when you have the option to not, even if it benefits you in some way.
- Yes, we should literally ban all fossil fuels, and restructure all cities such that the public transportation is more than enough for everyone. That this is even a matter of question is ludicrous.
This is exactly what comes to mind. It’s incoherent and will never help the issue.
They should be less annoying to the common people. They should target people in power, glue themselves on the road to the house of parlement for example, not prevent common people from going to work or vandalize art work.
It makes them look like idiots who have no clue.
I think the idea is to wake up normal people. If protesters only annoy the rich then nothing changes because it’s easy for the rich to ignore a couple of protesters.
If you annoy regular people then hopefully more people wake up. It’s a lot harder to ignore regular people especially if a lot wake up.
We need everyone in this world to be pissed off, not just a few activists. The sooner everyone is pissed the less leverage rich people have to ignore it all.
Also, publicity is a big factor. You pretty much guarantee some degree of media coverage when you do something like shut down a busy highway. I don’t think people consider often enough how important even negative press is in spreading the message.
Their actions make me hate them, not sympathize with their cause.
Then you never liked them to begin with and you were never going to sympathize with them anyways. If doing a completely harmless form of civil disobedience causes you to lose your marbles then you’re not interested in fixing anything to begin with.
Colin Kaepernick literally just kneeled before games, that’s it, that’s literally all he did , and still people lost their marbles, but the people losing their marbles were Trump voters who never cared about BlackLivesMatter to begin with
This same thing happened during the Civil Rights Era and it’s happened in other countries too
And he started kneeling after a military veteran told him that would be a respectable form of protest. Literally can’t win.
we don’t owe terrible people anything. we shouldn’t care what they think and focus on defeating them and changing the world without their permission, which we don’t need and shouldn’t be worried about obtaining.
This is too simple of a view. There are few, if any, effective ways to strike at people in power without hitting common folk at the same time. Maybe you can mildly inconvenience them, but that’s it. Their power isn’t isolated, it often derives from the complicity of common folk. Protests are disruptive for a reason, and it’s not because “everybody involved is stupid.”
For example, by blocking streets you inhibit commerce, and therefore inhibit anybody whose power derives from that commerce. But at the same time, you’re blocking the average person from going to work. How great must the threat be, how dire the circumstances, before you view that as an acceptable trade-off? Because if we are not at that point now, I find it hard to believe you’d ever find it acceptable, yet I’ve never been given an actionable and effective alternative from the people who are squeamish over these kinds of protests. So I have to ask; if not this, then what? If not now, then when?
I’ve never been given an actionable and effective alternative from the people who are squeamish over these kinds of protests. So I have to ask; if not this, then what? If not now, then when?
Infiltrate the political parties, especially the conservative right-wing ones that right now have disastrous environmental policies. These organisations are currently echo chambers driving a narrative that environmental policies are the enemy. They need to be reformed from within to get the message across that capitalism won’t work if there isn’t anyone around for the wealthy to sell their shit to. As long as political change is confined to what is seen as the “radical left”, it is easy to marginalize the moment.
Not at all, we are getting desperate out here. Our margins for actions to lessen, stop and revert climate change are getting smaller by the minute. So we need to be very annoying.
I support most (maybe even all) climate protests, violent and nonviolent ones.
I still think that it might be good to shift or expand(edit) tactics, because at least to me most tactics do not feel to be actually achieving any substantial goals while putting folks at high risk of injury and repression. Like yeah there is discourse, polarization and mobilization, but those are not actually the things that will mitigate climate change, reducing carbon emissions etc. will. This is my perspective from Germany so of course elsewhere things might be different.
Are there any success stories from other countries (or Germany) that show that currently dominant climate protest tactics(non violence, blocking roads, public stunts, glue everywhere, social media all the time) leading to actual changes getting implemented from public institutions, legislation or the private sector or changes in the behaviors of large parts of the population?___
Well not about climate, but if you take at the Stop de Kindermoord movement, that happened in the 1970s in the Netherlands, you can find some similarities: https://www.ejatlas.org/print/stop-de-kindermoord-stop-the-child-murder-protest-for-children-deaths-caused-by-motor-vehicles Blocking streets was one of their protest forms, too. And now take a look at the Dutch cities - it’s a pain to drive a car, while walking and cycling are far superior modes of transportation, while there is real life happening. And that’s not even only true for Amsterdam, but also for relatively small cities like Groningen
Blocking streets is directly connected to the issue. It’s a sensible protest.
Gluing yourself to paintings just makes environmentalists look like idiots. It’s doing a disservice to actual environmentalists who protest the companies causing the problems.
Well it’s not like cars (and especially the recent developments in terms of size and number) are not part of the climate issue… Afaik they dodged the paintings some time ago, haven’t they? Last things I heard from their protest forms were blocked airports, streets and gulf clubs - all are related to the climate
If they dodged the paintings then good. Blocking airports and roads is totally related to the climate crisis. When they block roads they’re making a coherent point.
even seemingly meaningless protests like the soup thing are somewhat effective. it gets people talking about the protests, which increases the number of people that will see it and protest in more effective ways.
I doubt it helps when they do shit that gets everyone hating on them
