8 ms·

"This was funded by a group started by three rich Americans who became concerned about climate change after their houses in Malibu were threatened by wildfires

"This was funded by a group started by three rich Americans who became concerned about climate change after their houses in Malibu were threatened by wildfires in 2018. I'm not making this up. Two are heirs (a Getty and a Kennedy) and the third has made a career of advising celebrity philanthropists." https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1580966385932414977 https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1580966385932414977

busyant 4y ago
whoever is funding this, i would say their approach is ineffective at best and almost certainly counterproductive to their cause.
- 1ris 4y ago
  That's what people said about PETA and whatever outrageous stuff they did. Time has disproven these people. I don't see how this is any different.
  - chadash 4y ago
    I'm not sure what you mean here. Are you implying that the world has come to accept PETA's cause. Because while some issues are dramatically different than 20-30 years ago (e.g. marijuana legalization, gay marriage), I don't think the bar has shifted very much on animal welfare.
    - 2muchcoffeeman 4y ago
      I think the implication is that PETA legitimately believes in their cause and methods.
      - pvaldes 4y ago
        And they fail again and again. Peta (and similar groups), are responsible of a lot of acts that can only described as environmental terrorism. And they did it for the money, not for the cause.
    - 1ris 4y ago
      Of course everybody thinks PETA as lunatics, maybe rightfully. But it was them made veganism a thing. It's mainstream now. I guess about between 2% and 5% of the population and growing. Burger king and McDonalds sell vegan options. That's absurdly successful. When they started it was literally about 5 people. I don't think most vegans will quote them for their change, but their activism that gave animal welfare attention in a attention economy, when it would otherwise simply not have gotten any.
      - GekkePrutser 4y ago
        I think globalisation plays a part in this too. Some Asian cultures are vegetarian or vegan and increased ties with the rest of the world has spread their culture too. I often eat at a Nepalese vegan restaurant and the food sure beats McDonald's or burger king. Not to mention they actually believe in veganism, they don't just have a token veggie burger on the menu because the market wants it. They even prohibit consumption of baby food with meat on the premises :)
        Fnoord 4y ago
        Prohibition is the very issue. Instead, market whatever vegan you got as better for environment (if that is your goal). As for prohibiting baby food, I would kindly tell them to go fuck themselves. Nobody is going to prohibit a parent from feeding their baby with food already prepared and bought. Its exactly this type of rhetoric which makes moderates skip on vegan community (and I eat vegan dishes on a daily basis!) I don't want whoever to believe, I want a neat combination of healthy, tasty, and good for environment/animal, but in a spectrum. Not extremes, not any toxic belief systems. (As for McDs and BK there are better veggie and vegan options available but I prefer BK vegan way over McDs vegan, hands down. That we have these options is a sign of time. When I was full-time vegan it was a nightmare to go out eating. Now we have New York Pizza delivering delicious vegan shoarma pizzas.)
    - ElevenLathe 4y ago
      When was the last time you saw someone wearing fur?
      - pvaldes 4y ago
        > When was the last time you saw someone wearing fur? Winter of 2022, half of Europe. PETA can frolic naked in the snow if they want.
        ElevenLathe 4y ago
        What? Anyway the point is that fur was at one point, not that long ago, quite common and fashionable, and now most people have never even seen a fur coat. This could be simply fashion (we dress a lot less formally now in general) but IMO you can also trace it pretty directly to PETA throwing paint on people wearing them. Why buy an expensive fur if somebody is just going to ruin it with paint or, worse, you just look like an asshole wearing it?
        pvaldes 4y ago
        > Why buy an expensive fur if somebody is just going to ruin it with paint or, worse, you just look like an asshole wearing it? Why buy an expensive tablet made of nasty coltan if a brat is just going to assault you and jump over it?, oh wait... in fact they don't do it. This hypocrites bully grandmas "in the name of ecology" while using all the time products made of materials that destroy the African rainforests and must be replaced each five years occupying entire landfills, and never think twice about it. And in their totalitarian utopia we all wear plastic replacements. Of course plastic fur is super-ecological. Have you heard of the problem with particles of "micro-leather" or "micro-fox-hair" polluting the oceans for decades?. Me neither. They are directly responsible of the death of animals and plants. Ruined clothes that would last an entire life otherwise, have now to be replaced at a much faster pace and hidden from sight, so more small carnivores will die for the children paint. They liberate chimps in the zoos with the results that the chimps must be shoot and killed by the same people that cared for them for years. Great job lads!. This animals could have a long quiet life. Save the chimps! under soil They blocked fixing the American grey squirrel invasion in Italy when it was possible. Grey is a squirrel species know for eating complete rings of bark and killing entire branches. Now the grey squirrels are killing the young trees and also propagating a virus that kills the native red squirrels. They were told before by the zoologists that the squirrels would be a problem. They just don't care. They did the same when the first racoons invaded Japan in 90's. Now the rampant coons cause millionaire damages in agriculture, threaten japanese unique biodiversity and scratch and urinate over 800 years old japanese temples damaging invaluable cultural artifacts. They were warned about it. Stupid, stupid people. They liberate alien carnivores that kill millions of birds. They never apologize by this, or showed the slightest sign of remorse. In resume, they are poison for a sensible ecological management and always take the wrong side in terms of nature conservation. This is what happens when you put toddlers to do surgery. But of course the rest of people are not moral enough and not saint enough. Not like them.
  - chucksmash 4y ago
    That's a huge subjective leap to say time has disproved people who consider PETA and their methods ridiculous. I would consider myself a person in favor of the ethical treatment of animals, and PETA campaigns like (the now quite old, but eminently memorable) "rebranding fish as sea kittens" [1] are so far out in la-la land, so ridiculous, and go so far in letting perfect be the enemy of good ("let's go after those unethical pescatarians!") that the organization loses credibility. It doesn't help that in the intervening years, my main interaction with the organization (as well as Oxfam, ASPCA, etc) has been shady third party donation subscription hawkers trying to earn commissions off of tricking me into acknowledging them on lunch hour. If there have been improvements in the treatment of animals over time, I'd make my own subjective leap to say they happened in spite of PETA, not because of it. [1]: https://spotlight.peta.org/petaseakittens/ https://spotlight.peta.org/petaseakittens/
    - 1ris 4y ago
      Yes, peta are profoundly unlikeable people, back then and now. I don't like them, I think their holocaust comparisons are unforgivable and neither am i vegan. My point is that they are living rent free in peoples heads and do actually change attitudes. Because there was a huge change and i just don't see who else could have caused that. My point was: Effective activism does not have to be likeable. Going for the opposite seems a viable strategy.
    - bawolff 4y ago
      I mean, at least "fish are sea kittens" has some connection to their cause. The girl with the pearl earing isn't exactly mining coal.
- kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
  Hopefully they'll all be charged as co-conspirators.
- FredPret 4y ago
  Unless discrediting the cause is the goal
  - warbler73 4y ago
    Agreed. That's really the only interpretation that makes sense, assuming they are acting rationally.
    - 1ris 4y ago
      Genuine question: What would you expect a rational actor to do FOR the cause? Because to me this looks very rational and very much for the cause.
      - BitwiseFool 4y ago
        I'll be up front and admit that I don't know what activism FOR the cause would be effective. But that doesn't stop me from knowing what isn't effective and what is actually wholly counterproductive. The reason why this doesn't look rational or 'for the cause' is because the target in question really has nothing to do with the petroleum industry. Johannes Vermeer painted this art in 1665 before the industrial revolution. The subject is just a woman with a pearl earring. So neither the painter nor the work of art have any persuasion or symbolism that encourages fossil fuel use. It seems totally illogical to commit an act such as this. I think the public at large sees no connection between what the activists went after and what they are trying to achieve. When that happens, it delegitimizes the movement in peoples eyes.
        warbler73 4y ago
        Agreed. The argument seems to be that the targeted pieces are "oil" paintings. But surely they know that the oil in these masterworks is derived from renewable sources and that therefore makes no sense, oil in oil paint is not petroleum based. So it seems the argument is disingenuous and there is a conspiracy. On the other hand I have realized that very few things people do are rational so the assumption common in economics theories that people are making rational choices I am not convinced by. Personally I think these people are all just crazy. However I can not rule out conspiracy to discredit. Like UFOs, this movement is an enigma.
site-packages1 4y ago
I don’t see this form of protest as effective nor do I agree with the methods at all. However, we as human beings can only focus on so many things at a time. Sometimes something bad happens that causes us to suddenly become attuned to or care about an issue. This seems to happen a lot when people undergo a horrible tragedy like being a victim of a mass shooting or contracting ALS or getting breast cancer. I don’t think it’s ridiculous at all that someone had something nearly bad happen to them (wildfires encroaching on their houses) and that caused them to become attuned to an issue and start taking a form of action to curb it (funding protestors). Again, not the actions I would take and in my opinion they’re ineffective actions, but we shouldn’t guffaw at people for becoming attuned to something through tragedy or near tragedy.
- colpabar 4y ago
  I agree with you, but I think that when we are talking about extremely wealthy people, it changes things. An oil heiress knows people in the oil industry. A kennedy knows people in politics. These people paying randos to throw soup and glue themselves to paintings is already ridiculous, but to hear that they're doing it because their mansions (which contribute much more carbon than wherever the randos live btw) almost burned down is just stupid and will not help anything. They could try to pressure the oil people they know. They could try to pressure the politicians they know. But they don't! Instead they are paying to destroy art that millions (billions?) of people from all over the world enjoy. Someone who smokes cigarettes whose partner dies of lung cancer from a lifetime of smoking who then decides to quit smoking and become an anti-tobacco activist should not be written off just because they're "only doing it" because it directly affected them via someone they love. Someone who is extremely rich because their ancestors made a killing selling oil who decides to become an "activist" after their mansion almost burned down due to wildfires should be mocked. Anyone can throw soup at a painting. Only the super rich can influence politicians (in america at least).
  - rowanG077 4y ago
    > They could try to pressure the politicians they know. But they don't! How do you know this? It's not exactly and either situation here.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
_hypx 4y ago
I've come to realize that most environmentalists don't really understand climate change. I guess it is similar to how PETA protests animal abuse but in a very dumb manner. Sure, there is a problem at the bottom of it, but these groups are very detached from reality.
paulcole 4y ago
I don’t know why you think that’s odd. Imagine an incredibly rare disease you’ve barely heard of. How much do you honestly care about it being cured? Now imagine you have that disease. Are you still as ambivalent? Most people don’t care that deeply about the things that don’t affect them (or their friends/family).

busyant 4y ago

whoever is funding this, i would say their approach is ineffective at best and almost certainly counterproductive to their cause.

1ris 4y ago
That's what people said about PETA and whatever outrageous stuff they did. Time has disproven these people. I don't see how this is any different.
- chadash 4y ago
  I'm not sure what you mean here. Are you implying that the world has come to accept PETA's cause. Because while some issues are dramatically different than 20-30 years ago (e.g. marijuana legalization, gay marriage), I don't think the bar has shifted very much on animal welfare.
  - 2muchcoffeeman 4y ago
    I think the implication is that PETA legitimately believes in their cause and methods.
    - pvaldes 4y ago
      And they fail again and again. Peta (and similar groups), are responsible of a lot of acts that can only described as environmental terrorism. And they did it for the money, not for the cause.
  - 1ris 4y ago
    Of course everybody thinks PETA as lunatics, maybe rightfully. But it was them made veganism a thing. It's mainstream now. I guess about between 2% and 5% of the population and growing. Burger king and McDonalds sell vegan options. That's absurdly successful. When they started it was literally about 5 people. I don't think most vegans will quote them for their change, but their activism that gave animal welfare attention in a attention economy, when it would otherwise simply not have gotten any.
    - GekkePrutser 4y ago
      I think globalisation plays a part in this too. Some Asian cultures are vegetarian or vegan and increased ties with the rest of the world has spread their culture too. I often eat at a Nepalese vegan restaurant and the food sure beats McDonald's or burger king. Not to mention they actually believe in veganism, they don't just have a token veggie burger on the menu because the market wants it. They even prohibit consumption of baby food with meat on the premises :)
      - Fnoord 4y ago
        Prohibition is the very issue. Instead, market whatever vegan you got as better for environment (if that is your goal). As for prohibiting baby food, I would kindly tell them to go fuck themselves. Nobody is going to prohibit a parent from feeding their baby with food already prepared and bought. Its exactly this type of rhetoric which makes moderates skip on vegan community (and I eat vegan dishes on a daily basis!) I don't want whoever to believe, I want a neat combination of healthy, tasty, and good for environment/animal, but in a spectrum. Not extremes, not any toxic belief systems. (As for McDs and BK there are better veggie and vegan options available but I prefer BK vegan way over McDs vegan, hands down. That we have these options is a sign of time. When I was full-time vegan it was a nightmare to go out eating. Now we have New York Pizza delivering delicious vegan shoarma pizzas.)
  - ElevenLathe 4y ago
    When was the last time you saw someone wearing fur?
    - pvaldes 4y ago
      > When was the last time you saw someone wearing fur? Winter of 2022, half of Europe. PETA can frolic naked in the snow if they want.
      - ElevenLathe 4y ago
        What? Anyway the point is that fur was at one point, not that long ago, quite common and fashionable, and now most people have never even seen a fur coat. This could be simply fashion (we dress a lot less formally now in general) but IMO you can also trace it pretty directly to PETA throwing paint on people wearing them. Why buy an expensive fur if somebody is just going to ruin it with paint or, worse, you just look like an asshole wearing it?
        pvaldes 4y ago
        > Why buy an expensive fur if somebody is just going to ruin it with paint or, worse, you just look like an asshole wearing it? Why buy an expensive tablet made of nasty coltan if a brat is just going to assault you and jump over it?, oh wait... in fact they don't do it. This hypocrites bully grandmas "in the name of ecology" while using all the time products made of materials that destroy the African rainforests and must be replaced each five years occupying entire landfills, and never think twice about it. And in their totalitarian utopia we all wear plastic replacements. Of course plastic fur is super-ecological. Have you heard of the problem with particles of "micro-leather" or "micro-fox-hair" polluting the oceans for decades?. Me neither. They are directly responsible of the death of animals and plants. Ruined clothes that would last an entire life otherwise, have now to be replaced at a much faster pace and hidden from sight, so more small carnivores will die for the children paint. They liberate chimps in the zoos with the results that the chimps must be shoot and killed by the same people that cared for them for years. Great job lads!. This animals could have a long quiet life. Save the chimps! under soil They blocked fixing the American grey squirrel invasion in Italy when it was possible. Grey is a squirrel species know for eating complete rings of bark and killing entire branches. Now the grey squirrels are killing the young trees and also propagating a virus that kills the native red squirrels. They were told before by the zoologists that the squirrels would be a problem. They just don't care. They did the same when the first racoons invaded Japan in 90's. Now the rampant coons cause millionaire damages in agriculture, threaten japanese unique biodiversity and scratch and urinate over 800 years old japanese temples damaging invaluable cultural artifacts. They were warned about it. Stupid, stupid people. They liberate alien carnivores that kill millions of birds. They never apologize by this, or showed the slightest sign of remorse. In resume, they are poison for a sensible ecological management and always take the wrong side in terms of nature conservation. This is what happens when you put toddlers to do surgery. But of course the rest of people are not moral enough and not saint enough. Not like them.
- chucksmash 4y ago
  That's a huge subjective leap to say time has disproved people who consider PETA and their methods ridiculous. I would consider myself a person in favor of the ethical treatment of animals, and PETA campaigns like (the now quite old, but eminently memorable) "rebranding fish as sea kittens" [1] are so far out in la-la land, so ridiculous, and go so far in letting perfect be the enemy of good ("let's go after those unethical pescatarians!") that the organization loses credibility. It doesn't help that in the intervening years, my main interaction with the organization (as well as Oxfam, ASPCA, etc) has been shady third party donation subscription hawkers trying to earn commissions off of tricking me into acknowledging them on lunch hour. If there have been improvements in the treatment of animals over time, I'd make my own subjective leap to say they happened in spite of PETA, not because of it. [1]: https://spotlight.peta.org/petaseakittens/ https://spotlight.peta.org/petaseakittens/
  - 1ris 4y ago
    Yes, peta are profoundly unlikeable people, back then and now. I don't like them, I think their holocaust comparisons are unforgivable and neither am i vegan. My point is that they are living rent free in peoples heads and do actually change attitudes. Because there was a huge change and i just don't see who else could have caused that. My point was: Effective activism does not have to be likeable. Going for the opposite seems a viable strategy.
  - bawolff 4y ago
    I mean, at least "fish are sea kittens" has some connection to their cause. The girl with the pearl earing isn't exactly mining coal.
kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
Hopefully they'll all be charged as co-conspirators.
FredPret 4y ago
Unless discrediting the cause is the goal
- warbler73 4y ago
  Agreed. That's really the only interpretation that makes sense, assuming they are acting rationally.
  - 1ris 4y ago
    Genuine question: What would you expect a rational actor to do FOR the cause? Because to me this looks very rational and very much for the cause.
    - BitwiseFool 4y ago
      I'll be up front and admit that I don't know what activism FOR the cause would be effective. But that doesn't stop me from knowing what isn't effective and what is actually wholly counterproductive. The reason why this doesn't look rational or 'for the cause' is because the target in question really has nothing to do with the petroleum industry. Johannes Vermeer painted this art in 1665 before the industrial revolution. The subject is just a woman with a pearl earring. So neither the painter nor the work of art have any persuasion or symbolism that encourages fossil fuel use. It seems totally illogical to commit an act such as this. I think the public at large sees no connection between what the activists went after and what they are trying to achieve. When that happens, it delegitimizes the movement in peoples eyes.
      - warbler73 4y ago
        Agreed. The argument seems to be that the targeted pieces are "oil" paintings. But surely they know that the oil in these masterworks is derived from renewable sources and that therefore makes no sense, oil in oil paint is not petroleum based. So it seems the argument is disingenuous and there is a conspiracy. On the other hand I have realized that very few things people do are rational so the assumption common in economics theories that people are making rational choices I am not convinced by. Personally I think these people are all just crazy. However I can not rule out conspiracy to discredit. Like UFOs, this movement is an enigma.

site-packages1 4y ago

I don’t see this form of protest as effective nor do I agree with the methods at all. However, we as human beings can only focus on so many things at a time. Sometimes something bad happens that causes us to suddenly become attuned to or care about an issue. This seems to happen a lot when people undergo a horrible tragedy like being a victim of a mass shooting or contracting ALS or getting breast cancer. I don’t think it’s ridiculous at all that someone had something nearly bad happen to them (wildfires encroaching on their houses) and that caused them to become attuned to an issue and start taking a form of action to curb it (funding protestors). Again, not the actions I would take and in my opinion they’re ineffective actions, but we shouldn’t guffaw at people for becoming attuned to something through tragedy or near tragedy.

colpabar 4y ago
I agree with you, but I think that when we are talking about extremely wealthy people, it changes things. An oil heiress knows people in the oil industry. A kennedy knows people in politics. These people paying randos to throw soup and glue themselves to paintings is already ridiculous, but to hear that they're doing it because their mansions (which contribute much more carbon than wherever the randos live btw) almost burned down is just stupid and will not help anything. They could try to pressure the oil people they know. They could try to pressure the politicians they know. But they don't! Instead they are paying to destroy art that millions (billions?) of people from all over the world enjoy. Someone who smokes cigarettes whose partner dies of lung cancer from a lifetime of smoking who then decides to quit smoking and become an anti-tobacco activist should not be written off just because they're "only doing it" because it directly affected them via someone they love. Someone who is extremely rich because their ancestors made a killing selling oil who decides to become an "activist" after their mansion almost burned down due to wildfires should be mocked. Anyone can throw soup at a painting. Only the super rich can influence politicians (in america at least).
- rowanG077 4y ago
  > They could try to pressure the politicians they know. But they don't! How do you know this? It's not exactly and either situation here.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

_hypx 4y ago

I've come to realize that most environmentalists don't really understand climate change. I guess it is similar to how PETA protests animal abuse but in a very dumb manner. Sure, there is a problem at the bottom of it, but these groups are very detached from reality.

paulcole 4y ago

I don’t know why you think that’s odd. Imagine an incredibly rare disease you’ve barely heard of. How much do you honestly care about it being cured? Now imagine you have that disease. Are you still as ambivalent? Most people don’t care that deeply about the things that don’t affect them (or their friends/family).