They're only driving away more people from climate change consciousness
If you allow them to crack down on protesting, then it won't be long before we're getting black-bagged, and dear old aunty will go on "extended holiday" because she disagreed with the government position.
We've seen it happen many times in the last century, in countries across the world, and the UK has been getting steadily worse over the last 20 years.
The slow creep of authoritarianism has seen many scary laws getting passed and practically no media attention on them. Everyone just shrugs, rather than actually trying to defend our freedom.
I'm often wrong, obviously.
What they might be wrong about is that gluing themselves to a road in front of commuters is a good strategy to reach their goals. Very few commuters will stop commuting ny car, very many will start to bash those people, while the planet becomes increasingly inhabitable.
Focusing on idiots who make bad choices is not something we can afford now, giving the seriousness of the problem.
I’m not sure that gluing yourself to a road for a few hours establishes the start of that chain in any kind of convincing way, and therefore think that they’d probably be better off doing something else.
When exposed to extreme situations (e.g. your kid dies) you might cry as an expression of grief and despair, although that expression will not improve the situation and bring your kid back.
A behavior like that would be both understandable and justifiable to anybody who is not a sociopath.
Now I'd argue that what these people are doing is an act of panic, isolation and utter despair that none of us normal people seem to care. It is more an expression of their feelings than an effective strategy to solve the problem. As such it is understandable to a degree, whether it is justified or not.
The question we should draw from this is whether it is them who are over-reacting or whether we are the ones who are under-reacting.
1.) Wynn Bruce who set himself on fire in front of the US Supreme Court in April 2022
2.) Activists gluing themselves to the street using superglue
3.) Teens throwing Campbell's tomato soup onto a Van Gogh Painting which is covered by protective glas.
The first two are a much clearer expression of desperation than the third one. The third one might be much more memorable because it is a good story and the people who need to hear it are probably not that much into the arts anyways. That means the third one is probably the most effective at communicating the goal and will weirdly enough stay in our minds longer than the guy who set himself on fire.
Yet you have to respect someone who so deeply cared about the planet, that he gave his life without screaming just to wake us up.
One truth is, that not everybody is capable of going down every road. For this man setting himself on fire was the way to address the problem that faces all of us – even if he could have used his life in more boring, but maybe also more effective ways. For the teens it was a very clever move involving tomato soup. For these activists in their isolation, it is gluing themselves to the street in front of the machines they perceive to be part of the problem. All of the three had the goal to break the regular flow of our lives with something that should make us listen.
I mean, seriously, the irony here!
Should have paid for insurance?
Comparethemarket says
"""You’re unlikely to be able to claim if you missed a flight due to:
oversleeping not getting yourself organised and leaving enough time to get to the airport or get through security a protest or civil unrest that had not been publicly announced in advance...