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> Today, there are people afraid that, if they engage in climate activism, they will be evicted from their homes, denied medical treatment, and left to starve t

> Today, there are people afraid that, if they engage in climate activism, they will be evicted from their homes, denied medical treatment, and left to starve to death. Where are these people? If they are in the US, their fears are completely unfounded and frankly ridiculous. However, the lesson here is that those are things authoritarian governments will do. So why would climate change activists advocate for authoritarian solutions if they are already concerned about what authoritarians can do to the people they disagree with? It comes down to a desire for the power they are scared of > Several governments are labelling people 'extremists' for blocking traffic with their (somehow) non-violent protests, and enforcing laws against them that were originally designed for terrorism. So blocking traffic on major roads is pretty extreme and is quite possibly the dumbest way to motivate any public change for their cause (The second dumbest being throwing soup and defacing artwork.).

wizzwizz4 3y ago
> If they are in the US, their fears are completely unfounded and frankly ridiculous. Get arrested, don't show up at work, get fired (totally legal: it's an at-will state!), lose your health insurance, can't pay rent, eviction, now your former landlord wants you to pay for your own eviction… You can apply for SNAP without an address of residence, so long as you can receive letters, but if not, you're reliant on savings or charity until you can get back on your feet. Alternatively, your employer doesn't like your activism and fires you for it; or your landlord doesn't (though this is potentially less bad than job loss – depends on circumstance). You don't even have to be an activist in the US for these sorts of things to happen: but activism is the opposite of keeping your head down, and makes them more likely. Demonstrative political activism is never without cost. That's basic signalling theory. > So blocking traffic on major roads is pretty extreme Cutting off the king's head is pretty extreme. Falling under the king's horse is pretty extreme, refusing to eat until food is poured into your lungs is pretty extreme, hiding Jews in the basement of a Nazi officer's villa is pretty extreme. How is blocking traffic extreme? Nobody calls it 'pretty extreme' when the rubbernecking after a car crash blocks traffic on major roads: that's just a cost of doing transport. Does the purposefulness, the meaningfulness, make blocking a road for a few days an extreme act? > motivate any public change for their cause The problem is political will. Doesn't matter how many people want universal suffrage, if the people in charge won't call a referendum. > The second dumbest being throwing soup and defacing artwork. If you're referring to the Just Stop Oil protests in October: they threw soup at a piece of glass in front of an artwork, and placed paper in front of another. Damage occurred to two frames and a small amount of varnish: none to the actual paint of any paintings. No artwork was destroyed, or even damaged. (If anything, art was created.)
- kcplate 3y ago
  > Get arrested, don't show up at work, get fired (totally legal: it's an at-will state!), lose your health insurance, can't pay rent, eviction, now your former landlord wants you to pay for your own eviction… Yes, actions have consequences. You have a right to protest, but if your method of protest has a law breaking component to it and you are arrested for that law you broke, there could be downstream consequences to your action. The very same thing can happen for any reason you may chose to break a law. Activism doesn’t give you a law breaking pass. > How is blocking traffic extreme? Would you do this on the regular just for the fun or utility of it? > The problem is political will. Doesn't matter how many people want universal suffrage…. Is that the problem? Seems to me what you are describing as a lack of “political will” is really your own impatience. > No artwork was destroyed, or even damaged. (If anything, art was created.) Yeah I am sure that striking the protective safety glass over the Velázquez painting 10x with hammers just to test to make sure it wouldn’t break and destroy the painting before they reinterpreted the masterpiece with their bold warholian-pollock style.
  - wizzwizz4 3y ago
    You don't need to break the law to get arrested. But the powers-that-be can just pass a law that makes protest illegal, and then what? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-65542558 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-65542558 (For clarity: while Amnesty International calls the bill "draconian",[0] the UK has not made all forms of protest illegal for all people. A government could, and many have,[1] but the UK government has not. And while the Met has some pretty serious issues, there's nothing even remotely like the police-violence-against-protestors stuff you see in the US (e.g. Stop Cop City). Indeed, the police in the UK – even the Met – are usually doing their jobs properly! See https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-67398933 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-67398933 for a slightly-less-cherrypicked example of Met officers making arrests at a protest.) In the US, many police departments use chemical weaponry – a war crime, if used in war – on unarmed civilian protestors. If you're following the rules, if you're behaving as you would “on the regular”, it's not a protest. Regarding climate change, of course people are impatient! We have no way to remove CO₂ from the atmosphere, so every month spent waiting is a month where things get permanently worse. It'll be hundreds of years before things start approaching the conditions of the average living person's childhood, and that's if we stop everything now, quickly enough that people will die from lack of infrastructure. [0]: https://www.amnesty.org.uk/blogs/campaigns-blog/public-order-bill-explained https://www.amnesty.org.uk/blogs/campaigns-blog/public-order... [1]: https://www.amnesty.org/en/what-we-do/freedom-of-expression/protest/#map https://www.amnesty.org/en/what-we-do/freedom-of-expression/...

wizzwizz4 3y ago

> If they are in the US, their fears are completely unfounded and frankly ridiculous. Get arrested, don't show up at work, get fired (totally legal: it's an at-will state!), lose your health insurance, can't pay rent, eviction, now your former landlord wants you to pay for your own eviction… You can apply for SNAP without an address of residence, so long as you can receive letters, but if not, you're reliant on savings or charity until you can get back on your feet. Alternatively, your employer doesn't like your activism and fires you for it; or your landlord doesn't (though this is potentially less bad than job loss – depends on circumstance). You don't even have to be an activist in the US for these sorts of things to happen: but activism is the opposite of keeping your head down, and makes them more likely. Demonstrative political activism is never without cost. That's basic signalling theory. > So blocking traffic on major roads is pretty extreme Cutting off the king's head is pretty extreme. Falling under the king's horse is pretty extreme, refusing to eat until food is poured into your lungs is pretty extreme, hiding Jews in the basement of a Nazi officer's villa is pretty extreme. How is blocking traffic extreme? Nobody calls it 'pretty extreme' when the rubbernecking after a car crash blocks traffic on major roads: that's just a cost of doing transport. Does the purposefulness, the meaningfulness, make blocking a road for a few days an extreme act? > motivate any public change for their cause The problem is political will. Doesn't matter how many people want universal suffrage, if the people in charge won't call a referendum. > The second dumbest being throwing soup and defacing artwork. If you're referring to the Just Stop Oil protests in October: they threw soup at a piece of glass in front of an artwork, and placed paper in front of another. Damage occurred to two frames and a small amount of varnish: none to the actual paint of any paintings. No artwork was destroyed, or even damaged. (If anything, art was created.)

kcplate 3y ago
> Get arrested, don't show up at work, get fired (totally legal: it's an at-will state!), lose your health insurance, can't pay rent, eviction, now your former landlord wants you to pay for your own eviction… Yes, actions have consequences. You have a right to protest, but if your method of protest has a law breaking component to it and you are arrested for that law you broke, there could be downstream consequences to your action. The very same thing can happen for any reason you may chose to break a law. Activism doesn’t give you a law breaking pass. > How is blocking traffic extreme? Would you do this on the regular just for the fun or utility of it? > The problem is political will. Doesn't matter how many people want universal suffrage…. Is that the problem? Seems to me what you are describing as a lack of “political will” is really your own impatience. > No artwork was destroyed, or even damaged. (If anything, art was created.) Yeah I am sure that striking the protective safety glass over the Velázquez painting 10x with hammers just to test to make sure it wouldn’t break and destroy the painting before they reinterpreted the masterpiece with their bold warholian-pollock style.
- wizzwizz4 3y ago
  You don't need to break the law to get arrested. But the powers-that-be can just pass a law that makes protest illegal, and then what? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-65542558 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-65542558 (For clarity: while Amnesty International calls the bill "draconian",[0] the UK has not made all forms of protest illegal for all people. A government could, and many have,[1] but the UK government has not. And while the Met has some pretty serious issues, there's nothing even remotely like the police-violence-against-protestors stuff you see in the US (e.g. Stop Cop City). Indeed, the police in the UK – even the Met – are usually doing their jobs properly! See https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-67398933 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-67398933 for a slightly-less-cherrypicked example of Met officers making arrests at a protest.) In the US, many police departments use chemical weaponry – a war crime, if used in war – on unarmed civilian protestors. If you're following the rules, if you're behaving as you would “on the regular”, it's not a protest. Regarding climate change, of course people are impatient! We have no way to remove CO₂ from the atmosphere, so every month spent waiting is a month where things get permanently worse. It'll be hundreds of years before things start approaching the conditions of the average living person's childhood, and that's if we stop everything now, quickly enough that people will die from lack of infrastructure. [0]: https://www.amnesty.org.uk/blogs/campaigns-blog/public-order-bill-explained https://www.amnesty.org.uk/blogs/campaigns-blog/public-order... [1]: https://www.amnesty.org/en/what-we-do/freedom-of-expression/protest/#map https://www.amnesty.org/en/what-we-do/freedom-of-expression/...