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Comment by samcday | Hacker News Reader

The level of negativity and hostility in the comments here is really disappointing to me. I agree that XR are definitely pushing the envelope on what we consider to be reasonable activism and protest.

However, I also think that the old adage "desperate times call for desperate measures" applies here. Yes, there are plenty of actions being taken to combat the damage we're inflicting to this little wet rock we all call home. But it seems obvious to me that there are enough people who think we're not doing enough that they are organizing and mobilizing in extraordinary ways.

Maybe some of those extraordinary ways cross the line. But who decides what the line is anyway? The people who are sitting at home typing out angry comments about how we should and shouldn't deal with the existential threat to our species? I hope not, or we're all doomed!

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> Maybe some of those extraordinary ways cross the line. But who decides what the line is anyway?

Probably the people you inconvenience.

A bunch of vegans disrupted traffic in Melbourne, Australia recently. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-04-08/melbourne-vegan-prote...

I don't think they made many friends.

It's really hard getting someone to change their mind or their thinking about an issue. But I firmly believe actively making enemies is probably not the way to go about things.

If I worked in Melbourne on that day, I would have eaten a revenge steak.

> I don't think they made many friends.

I don't think they're interested in making friends. They're interested in trying to persuade more people to stop eating the flesh of sentient creatures when our diets don't even require it.

> It's really hard getting someone to change their mind or their thinking about an issue.

I agree.

> But I firmly believe actively making enemies is probably not the way to go about things.

I disagree. Pretty sure there was lots of enemies made when women demanded the right to vote. Or when African Americans demanded to stop being segregated. We take a lot of things for granted as "obvious" now, but they're only obvious because enough people stood up and said they don't really care for your feelings.

> If I worked in Melbourne on that day, I would have eaten a revenge steak.

I think that says more about you than it does about the vegan activists.

> I don't think they're interested in making friends. They're interested in trying to persuade more people to stop eating the flesh of sentient creatures when our diets don't even require it.

And first making those people your enemies is a good way to persuade them to do it?

First of all, you need to make sure that the cause is known. Every demonstration, every strike, has the primary goal of raising attention. Yet, every strike, every demonstration inconveniences people and as such may make enemies.

I wasn't trying to make the case that it's the best way of doing it. Nor was I even implying that it's a particularly good way of doing it. But I do think that sometimes, it's the only way of doing it.

Also as an aside, I think there's deeper societal problems that we need to face if a few people lying on a road and stopping others from getting to work on time results in those people being considered "enemies".

Then they are going about it the wrong way. It is know at this point that the way to change people is to befriend them, listen to them and make sure that they see you as human, despite the differences.

It worked on the Klan, it worked on the babist church. Of course it is not satisfying and you get no virtue points.

Reminds me of the proverb "Honey attracts more flies than vinegar"

I wholeheartedly agree with you that taking the time to really connect with an individual so that you can then grapple with their beliefs from a place of deep, shared understanding is more ideal.

The problem is most of the scientific community is telling us that we're heading towards dire circumstances in the next few decades. I don't think we really have the time to hold everyone's hand and bring them gently to the realization that we're all part of a massive problem that could very well threaten the continued survival of our species :(

But I guess nothing I say here matters because I clearly don't actually believe any of it and I'm just virtue signalling.

> I wholeheartedly agree with you that taking the time to really connect with an individual so that you can then grapple with their beliefs from a place of deep, shared understanding is more ideal.

Ideally, yes, but in the debate about climate change, as with other issues like vaccines and whether the earth is round, there are bad actors who aren’t interested in having a rational debate no matter how many indisputable facts are put in their way.

There’s no point trying to engage with them; it’s just a waste of everyone’s time and energy. At least flat earthers can largely be ignored and we’re finally seeing community-preserving action against anti-vaxxers [1]. I don’t know what an equivalent action would be for bad-faith climate “debaters” because it’s not like we can leave them on this planet and go somewhere else.

1: https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/06/anti-vaxxers-defeate...

> I think that says more about you than it does about the vegan activists.

It means that I had a bad day because some one made me late for work and I vented my frustration out on a meal.

I watched the Netflix flat earther documentary and even the physicists interviewed preferred not to ridicule the flat earthers because they wanted to make sure they kept an open dialogue. I think there's a similar threshold for annoying people. Once you cross it, a lot of people are just going to stop listening to you.

> They're interested in trying to persuade more people to stop eating the flesh of sentient creatures when our diets don't even require it.

In a strict sense, you’re right, our diets don’t require meat. But most people wouldn’t consider it practical to take the 5-10 different supplements needed to replace all of the benefits of eating meat, fish, eggs and dairy. And that approach is almost certainly suboptimal to whole food sources anyway.

> But most people wouldn’t consider it practical to take the 5-10 different supplements needed to replace all of the benefits of eating meat, fish, eggs and dairy.

You need B12, that's all. Pretty much everyone in the first world supplements iodine, I don't know why some people have such reservations with B12.

The interesting thing to me is since the long Easter weekend of XR protests in the UK, opinion polls have shown them rising in popularity and environment polling higher too.

XR are not interested in making friends, but causing enough disruption to get government to treat the issue seriously, in the manner of civil rights and universal suffrage actions. They've certainly increased awareness and discussion. That they actually seem to be making friends by doing so would seem a surprise bonus.

Not only that, the signs are it's working, as change (insignificant tokenism, but nonetheless a step) has already achieved. Between XR and the school strikes parliament has actually declared a climate emergency, and even prospective Tory leadership candidates have declared positions on zero emissions. I don't expect the Tory party to actually do much, but it's a hook on which further legislation will be hung as XR and others are aiming to make it impossible to ignore.

It doesn't matter which party is in control, no action will be taken. Any action that takes a significant bite out of CO2 emissions will either cause a major decline in standard of living, or have an enormous financial cost. The people who answer that poll don't understand that. When they find out it will not be pleasant for whatever party is in power. The politicians from all parties know this. That's why they make lots of declarations and promises to do things by 2050 but take insignificant actions like banning plastic straws.

I would rather risk a small decrease in my standard of living today than cause a worldwide genocide within a few years.

You might be interested by "The Happiness-Energy Paradox: Energy Use is Unrelated to Subjective Well-Being".

Earth’s per capita energy use continues to grow, despite technological advances and widespread calls for reduction in energy consumption. The negative environmental consequences are well known: resource depletion, pollution, and global warming. However many remain reluctant to cut energy consumption because of the widespread, although, implicit, belief that a nation’s well being depends on its energy consumption. This article systematically examines the evidential support for the relationship between energy use and subjective well-being at the societal level, by integrating data from multiple sources, collected at multiple levels of government, and spanning four decades. This analysis reveals, surprisingly, that the most common measure of subjective well-being, life satisfaction, is unrelated to energy use -- whether measured at the national, state or county level.

Not convinced polls only catch the ignorant. :)

Cost is trivial compared to the cost of inaction. The consequences of no action on climate change will have enormous financial cost times ten, times twenty. Do we really want to find out?

You might want to look at Labour, SNP and Lib Dem climate policy. Whether they get to form a government or informal coalition is, of course, another matter as environment is not - yet - the sole issue that wins elections. Even the Conservative party is moving in the right direction, albeit glacially slowly with some creative accounting.

The only choice left is matter of degree.

The polls I've seen put the public at 52% broadly opposed to their actions (36% broadly supportive) back in May, and I have trouble believing droning Heathrow will improve that. Sure, they have succeeded in pushing climate change higher in the news cycle, but the secular trend was in that direction anyway, "awareness" of anthropogenic climate change was at ~95% and the government already had a Net Zero strategy that was less insubstantial than the symbolic declaration of emergency, and a backdrop of emissions having fallen steadily in the UK for a very long time. Not all news is good news either: if our most-likely next PM needs an excuse to renege on his old "I'll lie in front of the bulldozer" pledge to do everything in his power to block Heathrow expansion, it's difficult to think of better cover than arguing that he's not going to let protestors set his legislative agenda...

(Also hard to imagine that legislators in more climatically-significant countries like China are likely to see climate anarchists shutting down British airports as a sign that more action needs to be taken on emissions and not a sign that certain parts of the West have lost their minds over the subject of climate change.)

I'm inclined to agree that drones at Heathrow will be a misstep that could backfire for XR. It's an outsize disruption with possibility of outsize jail sentences when they always claimed they were focusing on the capital where the government and decision makers are. Heathrow seems a bit of a stretch. City airport perhaps. To me it's a confusing choice.

The government's net zero strategy is little more than not disputing the Select Committee on Climate Change's report. As the committee themselves note there now needs to be actual policy. From an administration that has been hugely counterproductive to adoption of greener energy.

Edit: I suspect Boris forgot about his pledge the morning after he uttered it. :)

One objective may be (or may at some point be) to cause enough economic damage that certain ecologically damaging activities are no longer economically Portugal. Start working on economic terms and governments and corporations start to listen.

Such actions are covered by the UK definition of terrorism:

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/11/section/1

Out of interest, are you a lawyer? I'm really struggling to see how you can interpret the language of the page you linked to include non-violent activism. Could you tell me specifically which sections of that legislation you think apply here?

Targeting critical infrastructure to get what you want is definition of terrorism.

I just want to say I hear you and think there could very well be some interesting nuances that we could discuss. But I have a policy of not engaging with throwaway accounts. If you want to send me an email and discuss this further, then great! My email is in my profile. Or if you want to repost this comment from a non-throwaway account, even better!

1a -> 2d : creates a serious risk to the health or safety of the public or a section of the public

1b : the use or threat is designed to influence the government or an international governmental organisation

1c: the use or threat is made for the purpose of advancing a political, religious, racial or ideological cause

So XR is an ideological and/or political cause, intended to influence Governments, and this threat to fly drones over airports in and of itself risks the public. Assume a failure and/or crash of the drone, and all the bad "accidental" things which could arise.

One could certainly argue that the statute is "wrong", and that this sort of action should be treated as some other criminal offence. However I believe it is capable of being argued as terrorism under that definition.

Hence anyone so charged could be subject to pre-trial detention of up to 28 days, and then may have to convince a jury that they should engage in Nullification.

Part of the complaints about that Act when passed was specifically that it covered stuff which did not involve violence (2b - 2e). Note that the criteria in Section 1 (2) are logically OR'ed - only one of 2a through 2e has to be satisfied.

If you believe you may need advice from a Lawyer, I suggest you consult one.

Did they create a serious risk?

That would be a fact for the Jury to decide.

I'd rather expect it to conclude they did.

Forget about planes flying (or not).

How much does one of these drones weigh? How much damage or injury would one cause if it falls upon someone or some equipment within the airport grounds? Think of the various flammable liquids in various parts of the airport.

We have rules (and licensing conditions) about flying drones in general, simply because of the serious risk some of them can entail. They came in within the last few years.

When I asked if you were a lawyer, I was genuinely curious. I figured if you were linking legislation without actually pointing out specifics, then it might be because your point was so blatantly obvious that only a dummy would not see it as self evident ;)

I disagree with your assessment. I myself am certainly not a lawyer, but the way I interpret that language is for something to be considered an act of terrorism it has to meet a criteria from section [1] AND section [2]. I agree that the planned drone demonstration meets 1c, but I don't think it meets any of the criteria from section 2.

If you're suggesting that because they're disrupting transportation activity then they are somehow creating serious risk to the health and safety of the public, then I wonder what you think of any kind of large scale protest march that closes down the majority of main roads in a capital city? Is that terrorism too?

I think you have to consider how transportation activity is being disrupted. It’s being disrupted because the risk of a collision between a drone and airliner carrying many people is considered a grave safety threat to hundreds of lives. A low altitude crash of an airliner poses serious risk of a large number of deaths both of the passengers and people on the ground. A large, non violent, protest blocking the streets probably doesn’t create the same risk of large numbers of deaths.

> I disagree with your assessment. I myself am certainly not a lawyer, but the way I interpret that language is for something to be considered an act of terrorism it has to meet a criteria from section [1] AND section [2]. I agree that the planned drone demonstration meets 1c, but I don't think it meets any of the criteria from section 2.

Also not a lawyer, but it seems pretty clear to me that flying drones around an airport can be considered to fall under 2(d): "creates a serious risk to the health or safety of the public or a section of the public".

The fact that the airport can respond by closing down operations to mitigate the risk does not make it OK, any more than phoning in a warning before setting off a bomb makes that OK.

This is actually the best rebuttal I’ve seen so far, thank you.

I still think it’s unfair to compare a drone inside restricted airspace (and notified well ahead of time) to an explosive device in the terminal.

But I can certainly see how the two things can be put in the same category by many people.

Shutting down essential services is a risk to the public.

Imagine someone waiting for a life-saving kidney transplant or whatever. Now you have to get an uber to deliver it.

Yes, the greatest issue with that piece of legislation.

Not sure if OP or anyone else who thought along similar lines will see this follow up, but I was mulling the original comment over some more and I know why I reacted so strongly to it.

When I think of the word terrorism, and I'm sure many others think like me, I think of 9/11. Or the Las Vegas shooting. Or one of the many horrible bombings in various parts of Middle East, etc.

Those are acts that have no pre-warning, and are designed to inflict as much pain and suffering as possible, and to cause as much fear and, dare I say it, terror as possible.

What XR are intending on doing is abusing an obvious outcome of notifying civil aviation authorities that a dangerous object will be active in airspace where civilian commercial airflight is taking place. The outcome being flights are grounded and redirected, causing a lot of inconvenience to people and costing the economy potentially millions of dollars.

I think XR believes it's a 100% obvious thing that by notifying the appropriate authorities well ahead of time, all planes will be safely rerouted or grounded. If there was even the slightest chance that their actions could cause a plane crash, then I firmly believe XR would not even consider such an action.

So yes, I understand we have actual legislation that could very reasonably be used to charge the people responsible for the plan at Heathrow airport. The problem is I think that the legislation in question was designed to target something very different. If activists from XR are convicted of charges stemming from the "Terrorism Act", it becomes perfectly reasonable to label those activists as terrorists.

But then what we've actually done here is placed activists who never had the slightest intention of causing grievous harm to other people (loss of life, massive economic damage, etc) into the same category we reserve for extremists who have perpetrated genuine atrocities. That just seems completely wrong to me.

If we want to bring about legislation that criminalizes certain forms of activism that go "too far", then fine. I think even that could be a perilous path, but I can make my peace with it being necessary. I would just hope we stop and ensure everyone is on the same page that we're categorizing these people as something like "activists who went too far" in order to distinguish them from "extremists who carried out attacks that we as a society consider utterly unthinkable and terrifying".

>When I think of the word terrorism, and I'm sure many others think like me, I think of 9/11. Or the Las Vegas shooting.

Did the Las Vegas shooter have any ideological motivation? I thought he was just a nasty guy with a lot of guns.

> The level of negativity and hostility in the comments here is really disappointing to me.

A group of people acted like irresponsible fuckheads and got negative pushback? What a concept.

From what I see, successful protests were based around unifying actions. Who was ultimately more impactful, the Black Panthers or MLK? Which one promoted a message which split people into groups, and which promoted a message that unified people and promoted empathy?

Flying a drone into airspace is not only irresponsible because to puts lives and property at risk, but it does nothing to promote the cause because it divides people into two groups - the people affected by delays, and the people causing those delays.

Whenever a group seeks to get their way by interfering with the rights of others, because what they are trying to achieve is "too important" to worry about such "petty" concerns as people's right to freely travel, engage in commerce, and generally pursue happiness - it's time to watch out. Recent (past 200 years) history is filled with example after example of how tragically this ends.

This is not civil disobedience. This is actively attacking other people and putting their lives at risk.

Groups such as this are not doing anything noble, and they do not deserve any admiration, respect, or protection.

Do we not have a right to clean air? One could easily argue the most of the population is interfering with my right to breathe clean air and enjoy normal weather.

As a drone enthusiast, I'm not super excited about the impending outlawing of drones because some people are idiots. I want to be able to enjoy my hobby, but I won't be able to if these people get drones outlawed.

To be honest, I'm about 100% certain that ecoterrorism (terrorism to protect the environment) will be the next main type of terrorism. And I think it's going to start happening much sooner than anyone things.

And, truthfully, I can't say I blame the people.

> [...] or we're all doomed!

When are we all doomed? Can you put a date (year) on it?

I'm going to assume you're joking here, this definitely made me chuckle :)

No joke. Is it 10 years from now, 100 years, or something else?

Kinda bummed that you weren't joking. The tone of these threads is pretty depressing and I could have used a little pick-me-up.

Anyway, I'm not a climatologist, but from what I understand we will be seeing significant global ramifications in the next 2-3 decades. In other words, it's not just the next generation that's going to suffer, it's going to be a great deal many of us who are alive today.

Not OP but if you're posting here on HN, you're probably not going to find too much trouble parsing the actual academic papers vs. press releases and IPCC summaries

When you do, you may find that while there's virtually no question human activities are having effect(s) on climate (very likely negative) there's a LOT of uncertainty on what and how much the effect(s) are.

Did you though the same when we were told that in 20 year the Earth would be unhabitable due to the holes in the ozone layer and that it would take hundreds of not thousands of years to heal (that was 25 years ago btw)?

How about when Al Gore told your that inconvenient truth that the sea levels world rise 100m during the next decade (that was 15 years ago btw)?

Sure, there's been plenty of scares in the past. Many of them even seemed extremely legitimate and had plenty of esteemed voices behind them.

But let's not talk in the abstract here. We're talking about climate change now. In 2019. And I believe very strongly that our planet is going through unprecedented changes that are caused by human activity. Those changes will result in suffering for a huge number of fellow members of my beloved species.

If you don't believe the same things I do, that's cool. I truly hope I'm wrong and you're right.

> holes in the ozone layer

Funny you mention that. No one needed to panic, 1980s politicians appeared to remember what some of their job was. Two rather right leaning free-market monetarist politicians - Thatcher and Reagan - championed international action to phase out freon and other CFCs. Very successfully. The ozone hole closed.

At the exact same time Thatcher was making speeches - to the UN and many others about the need for strong international action on climate. That was less successful. Had anyone bothered to listen we might have sorted emissions by now. Here's one snippet from her 1989 UN speech[1]:

"We should work through this great organisation and its agencies to secure world-wide agreements on ways to cope with the effects of climate change, the thinning of the Ozone Layer, and the loss of precious species.

We need a realistic programme of action and an equally realistic timetable.

Each country has to contribute, and those countries who are industrialised must contribute more to help those who are not."

How prescient.

> sea levels world rise 100m during the next decade

He did not say that.

[1] https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/107817

I wish more of the comments here were like this. Most of my comments are rubbish troll-bait, I'm glad people like NeedMoreTea exist. Someone who can calmly and rationally make a series of excellent points grounded in fact and history :)

The thing is, those Thatcher speeches (and of course all the movement in Europe) worked, we reduced our emissions by almost 30% in 30 years. Which makes it specially bad when a bunch of people from the comfort of their life in here, now decide they can go around with their extremist views of environmentalism causing havoc in no less than in an European country: i.e. the only set of industrialized countries that actually addressed the problem.

https://climateactiontracker.org/countries/eu/

And my post was not about not taking measures, but about the catastrophic scenarios we keep being presented.

> The ozone hole closed.

Well, the thing is my point is exactly the exaggeration of those catastrophic scenarios:

1: we kept being told the hole would take hundreds of years to close even if we completely shuted down all CFC emissions at the time.

2: China continues to emit CFCs: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-44738952

You made a similar point about China in one of the other siblings. But now you've expanded it to the point where you're contradicting yourself.

On the one hand, you're saying that trying to tackle climate change in the UK is pointless because China is contributing the lion's share of CO2. But then on the other hand you're equating the climate change crisis to crises that have come before and were proven to be exaggerated scenarios.

It might be worth you stating where you stand on climate change, otherwise I'm not really sure what points you're actually trying to make.

No there is nothing contradictory, the points are simple:

1: These catastrophic scenarios have historically been great exaggerations of reality.

2: The major culprit at the moment, by a long margin, is China, while the EU has actually a very good track in reducing CO2 emissions.

Okay, thanks for restating.

1. Yep, I somewhat agree. So can you please clarify your stance as to whether the current climate change situation is another example?

2. Yep, and I sincerely hope China also pulls their heads out of their collective asses. However, the UK is also not out of the woods yet [1]. Just because China has a long way to go doesn't mean any other country should be easing off the gas pedal (terrible pun, hope you'll forgive me).

[1]: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/2995521/9779945/8-08...

My stance on the current global warming is that it is real and that it is serious, but not nearly as catastrophic as the media and these more extremist environmentalists, present it.

i.e. If all other countries would go on a steady course of diminishing their emissions for about 1%/year like the EU has been doing for the past 3 decades, the problem will be addressed.

Sure Europe took more action than most, but those actions are clearly now seen to be a) insufficient, and b) limited to a small proportion of the world's emissions. China and the US more than cancel out any improvements the EU made. They might have been sufficient if everyone had played, though I doubt it. They didn't, so the goal posts have moved significantly. There's still only one planet.

Apologies for my shorthand purely for brevity, I thought the real progress was quite well known. The ozone hole is not actually closed yet. The trend is very much in the right direction thanks to those international treaties on CFCs. There's also huge hysteresis in the system so change follows very slowly indeed. The trend of improvement has indeed slowed, apparently courtesy of China breaching the treaty they signed - they have form here, not just the recent breach of Hong Kong treaties. Sadly the UN and international community doesn't seem willing to sanction China for breaches of anything much.

At current progress - depending on China - a century or a little over looks to be right on the money. The clock is at about 50 years. Nonetheless it looks like we found the right cause and remedy, and acted in appropriate time.

Less exaggerated catastrophe, more bloody accurate estimate I'd say. As your BBC link confirms. Here's a link with some trend graphs - see for yourself.

Where's the exaggeration? The odd piece reporting badly doesn't make the case - the media is often terrible reporting science. Any science. :)

https://theconversation.com/ozone-hole-closing-for-the-year-...

Sorry but those actions where clearly sufficient. If all countries had reduced their CO2 emissions like the EU block did, we would be in an excellent state. The reduction needs to keep happening in a steady pace, not have a sudden shift like these extremist environmentalist are calling for.

My issue with those analysis is that they are political, not environmentalist. For instance, if you look at India in those same analysis, you see they are doing great (although having increased they CO2 emissions in 300% and set to soon become the 2nd biggest polluter by a long margin).

In fact that's my issue with this all movement: It seems to take roots in contesting Western Society by using the climate crisis to force major political change in the West by disrupting the all economic output (because this will be what happens if you suddenly break the energy consumption by several %), and then build a society according to the political views of a minority that thinks they know best.

At the same time, that won't stop global warming at all, since the emissions on the West are already the minor part of the global emissions (due to china) and soon will become an even smaller part (due to India).

No, they weren't. They were meant to be a first step of many as part of a sustained programme of international action. We mostly didn't bother, so it's rather academic anyway. We lost the luxury of 30 years of steady incremental managed and subsidised change and now need to apply the emergency brake.

I'm not sure which environmental extremists you are thinking of. Environmental extremists like the UN IPCC - the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, whose current chair is an economist - are contesting Western society by disrupting all economic output? There was me thinking they are working to try and keep the possibility of some economic output by avoiding civilisation crash.

This is not some cliche hair-shirt 70s environmental hippies going overboard on the ganja at peace camp. This is chemists, meteorologists, climatologists and economists, etc appointed by the world's governments. Governments that are, I assume, mostly not seeking a rerun of 1917.

XR want to achieve the IPCC's aims. Nothing more. I see regular people from a diverse mix of very normal backgrounds with regular jobs. I see no reds under the bed.

The EU reduced their emissions by close to 30% in 30 years. These actions were obviously sufficient. Problem is that only the EU (what what are now the EU members) took the effort. The EU should be praised as an example and instead we have a bunch of environmentalist extremists shutting down airports here with drones.

> Did you though the same when we were told that in 20 year the Earth would be unhabitable due to the holes in the ozone layer

Yeah, it's really strange that a planetary risk doesn't come to pass when society reacts swiftly and does what science recommends them to do (i.e. banning CFCs, which the world did in the Montreal treaty).

When counteracting what I said, you conveniently left aside:

1: The part where we, at the time, were told that the hole would take hundreds of years to close: It didn't. (Pear Reviewed article from 1996: https://www.nap.edu/read/9042/chapter/1#6)

2: China is still producing those CFCs: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-44738952

So what you're saying is, the fact we were wrong about how long it would take to recover proves that the whole thing was a farce? Your data says nothing to counter whether the ozone hole was actually a major problem (spoiler: it was).

The fact that China is flaunting the rules the international community agreed on means what, exactly? The undeniable fact is the ozone hole did NOT continue to grow, because the majority of the world halted their use of CFCs. And wouldn't you know it, when we stopped using CFCs we stopped fucking up our ozone!

> So what you're saying is, the fact we were wrong about how long it would take to recover proves that the whole thing was a farce?

It proves the all thing was an exaggeration.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boy_Who_Cried_Wolf

Pissing people off is not a very effective way of getting them to be sympathetic to your cause.

Also, I’m sure a good number of people flying are already worried about the climate but they still have to get where they’re going faster than a week.

Looking at this from another country, I would expect nothing else except blow back. My first thought is are we dealing with idiots, a false flag, or trolls. If this is where 'desperate measures' has led too, they are better off doing nothing. This sort of strike action isn't going to get the general population to vote green, but vote fascist.

It seems pretty effective (that's not endorsement) if you're talking about a small local protest from another country. Maybe they're actually not idiots but just people you disagree with?

I disagree with the methods, and am somewhat pissed off at how this will set back the cause. I see it harming climate change action, and I expect to see this small local protest used as a political tool by the right wing all over the place. I expect it to be used as an excuse for new laws and police powers in the UK at least, although with the ongoing brexit it might take a while.

> However, I also think that the old adage "desperate times call for desperate measures" applies here.

If they were really into desperate measures, their actions would be targeting China (you know, that country that now produces more CO2 than all the Western countries combined and that is set to keep greatly increasing it during the next decade), not the only set of developed countries that actually did something and greatly decreased their CO2 emissions in the last decades.

I see your point, but I disagree.

The people involved in XR are British citizens. If they were to go to China and start performing acts of civil disobedience, they'd simply be deported (or worse).

Instead, they're trying to effect change in a place where they're afforded civil liberties to do so. I don't claim to speak for that movement, and maybe I'm not even thinking along the same lines as they are, but I would guess their hope is that if they change their home country then that example will help to influence other nations.

Per capita, which seems like a more fair comparison, plenty of Western countries produce more CO2 than China; the US and Canada each produce about twice as much.

I disagree. It's certainly not a fair comparison to look at these issues per capita. I should not be morally responsible for people that have way to many childrten with no regard for sustainability (be it environmental or economical).

Each country should be responsible to make their territory carbon neutral. If they have an high or low population density should be an irrelevant point.

You should be thankful towards China then.

Who knows how many more people would have been born if they did not enforce their one child policy or whatever.

> It's certainly not a fair comparison to look at these issues per capita. [..] Each country should be responsible to make their territory carbon neutral

You want to shift the goal post to territory instead of population? Sure, lets do this. Wikipedia already has a nice sortable list ready for us [0], with the UK at 1,564, nearly 50% worse than China at 1,133 t CO2/km²/yr.

So, how do we want to define a next target, that allows us to keep telling ourselves someone else is the actual cause of the problem instead of us? GDP/Co2? Scientific papers / Co2? Top 10 watched movies/Co2? Options are unlimited, so I'm sure we'll find something in the end. But maybe we should actually verify whatever we propose doesn't also make us look like the bad guys, since constantly shifting the goal post kinda makes us look like fools.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di...

UK is already diminishing their CO2 emissions for 30 years now and is set to continue decreasing them.

China increased them by 300% in 30 years and is set to continue increasing then.

All in all, UK seting their emissions at 0% wouldn't do anything for global warming. But China decreasing them by 50% would probably save us all. Yet, these so called environmentalists, keep finding excuses for letting China go on with their business as usual, which makes it really clear they are not interested in the well being off the planet but in social upveal and some kind of revolution in Europe to install their ideology (which has very little of environmentalism) in power.

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