Climate activists block private jet take-offs at Schiphol Airport
reuters.com
reuters.com
Wouldn’t it be better to start somewhere in the top half of the problem?
It we could actually delay the problem by a decade or so, technology would improve to help address climate change. Maybe fusion gets resolved in that decade, cheap hydrogen becomes possible, batteries improve, …
I'm going to go on a limb and say that the typical private jet flyer's (celerity/executive) reaction to their flights getting delayed/canceled because of climate protesters isn't going to call their political contacts to get climate legislation expedited.
If you had to fill up your car and climate protesters blocked all the local petrol stations, is that going to change your mind?
It might very well inhibit them from picking up that phone and lobbying to water down climate legislation.
I suggest reading the news.
“Centrist Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) criticized President Joe Biden for recent comments he made about shutting down coal plants across the country, decrying the idea as being “divorced from reality.”
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/campaigns/manchin-un...
Maybe it's time to start calling out these ecoterrorist clowns for what they truly are.
the problem is that the cyclist they killed is not "the polluting industry". the other problem is that even if he was CEO of Exxon, what is revenge killing OK now and not murder?
if you go around blocking, harassing, destroying property, injuring and/or killing people - who are individuals that largely have no more or less ability to change things than you - then you are a terrorist, not a protester. you do not know if that traffic jam blocked an organ transplant or an ambulance.
it's fine to protest and hold signs and shout and have parades and be politically active, fine you are an activist. beyond that, you're no longer the good guy underdog - you're worse than "the industry" you wish to save us from.
So yeah, I'm not convinced "big oil" is the bigger danger to democracy than this kind of, perhaps misguided, behavior in a free and civilized society. You really want minority opinion groups enforcing their strong opinions on everybody else by force and terrorist tactics? That door swings both ways big time and what happens next wouldn't be "fixing big oil" it'd be far, far, worse (China? Russia? Saudi?).
If you're unconvinced that the very perpetrators of what's in all likelihood an existential threat to humanity as a species are a bigger danger to democracy than the very people doing what little they can to prevent that existential threat, then you are encouraged to review the abundance of evidence available. Kinda hard to have democracy when we're all dead.
but you also miss my real point, even if you believe strongly that this must be solved: you can't fight big oil when you are a dictatorship
you can't fight anything unless you have a strong majority that all agree "if we do a majority vote, we'll all be 100% behind whatever the decision is because we trust our imperfect democracy to be good enough".
what we are normalizing is a society that says we'll all be behind the decision, unless it's not what our special group said was the right one otherwise we'll have a tantrum. once nobody trusts that system or anyone else in it, guess who wins and "unites" everyone? mau, stalin, putin, etc. not mr. snuggles who will save us all from houselessness and oil.
divisive and illegal tactics are incredibly harmful to both society and your own cause. the group of people who watched the private plane owners inconvenienced said "ha ha - great! serves them right" already believes your argument. the rest of the people, those who you need to convince, said "yikes these are dangerous morons throwing a tantrum" and aren't ready to listen to anything they say.
That's never how majoritarian democracy has worked even in theory, let alone practice. There have always been people resisting the majority decision, specifically because the majority is not always right.
And this presumes, of course, that any of the "democratic" societies of today's world are actually democracies rather than oligarchies.
> tantrum
That you'd write off recognition of an existential threat to humankind's existence as a "tantrum" is telling, and suggests that no, you have not been reviewing "all the evidence" with anywhere near enough depth; it's a bit rich to accuse climate activists of all people of "tantrums" in the context of rich people being prevented from enjoying a disproportionately wasteful and destructive luxury and calling in military police over it instead of, you know, taking a train or gasp flying with the poors in First Class.
Point being: if you're already willing to prioritize billionaire luxuries over the planet's ability to sustain life as we know it, then no amount of civility on the part of climate activists is going to change that; you'll just find some other excuse to dismiss them while we all continue to stare down the barrel of a self-induced extinction event.
> the rest of the people, those who you need to convince
The ones we need to convince are the ones with the actual power over the global socioeconomic system designed to prioritize profit over all else, Earth's biosphere included. Coddling those in charge hasn't worked; the rich and powerful should be entirely unsurprised that the responses to them largely ignoring the well-being of their subjects might escalate.
if you resist within the law and generous existing freedoms to do that, that's fine. if you feel it requires anything beyond that, you are essentially invoking a call to revolution. so if you'd tear down what we have, imperfect or not, over your single issue, that's exactly what I mean by "more dangerous". consider the substantial risk that we'd end up in an much more inequitable and un-ecologically sound system.
> That you'd write off recognition of an existential threat to humankind's existence as a "tantrum" is telling
I appreciate you mean "telling" as a complement. it also demonstrates nicely what I mean by "tantrum": if I don't agree with you, then I must not have studied the data enough because it's so obvious that your position is right.
> if you're already willing to prioritize billionaire luxuries
I'm willing to prioritize everyone's right to exist and function withing the framework of society. Including billionaires, if they are people too.
> The ones we need to convince are the ones with the actual power
are they? I doubt those in the actual power are going to be convinced by you sitting in front of their private jets or really anything else.
who you need to convince is super-majority of the rest of society. this kind of behavior and dismissiveness is spectacularly inept at convincing, which is why it hasn't worked to your satisfaction. back to the original problem, making thousands of people wait in traffic, while killing someone in the process is extremely unconvincing.
There's a pretty broad spectrum of civil disobedience between "passive protest" and "overthrow of the current regime" - for example, disrupting the lives of those both largely responsible for the looming existential threat and in possession of the authority to make a meaningful attempt at mitigating further damage.
> if I don't agree with you, then I must not have studied the data enough because it's so obvious that your position is right.
Well yes. If I didn't believe my position to be right, then I wouldn't be arguing it, now would I? And if there wasn't ample evidence of said position being right, then I wouldn't have reason to believe it to be right, now would I?
Again: the stakes here are human extinction. Blaming the people concerned about that risk for being a bit passionate about, you know, not fucking dying is kinda asinine, no?
> are they?
Yes, by virtue of them, you know, being in power. The alternative would be to remove them from power - a.k.a. revolution - but you seem opposed to that so that kinda narrows things down.
this I agree with. and when you go past innocent civil disobedience and disrupt not just the lives of those who, according to you as judge and jury, are responsible, but other folks, you are into mild forms of eco-terrorism. when someone dies, it's not as mild.
> Well yes.
ok, then I believe the moon is made of green cheese and is inhabited by lizard people. If you don't believe me, you haven't studied the facts enough. Are you convinced? No? I'll call you names then, block traffic and make you late for work. In this whole exchange you're focused on the truth and righteousness of your cause - I'm saying your methods of convincing people are faulty and your idea of how to instigate change is as dangerous as it is ineffectual.
> alternative
you get a majority of regular people together and out vote them out. the people that are in power are there because we (not you or i, but we) let them be. you need to bring the argument to people in a form that is convincing, not spit through your teeth that it is extinction!, damnit!
the reason nobody does anything about big oil is that they are too powerful for a small noisy minority to do anything about. they are not too powerful if everyone believed as strongly as you do. but everybody doesn't.
and stunts and behaviors and extremism are highly unlikely to change that. you're not convincing powerful people to fear you, you aren't convincing regular people to follow you, you aren't convincing thoughtful people to listen. folks that act that way are doing more to harm your cause than help it, regardless of whether it's true or not.
When millions (let alone billions) die, people like you pretending that said deaths are acceptable because the people who warned about it and sought to prevent it dared to mildly inconvenience some rich people will not be remembered fondly - assuming anyone's alive to remember you at all.
> then I believe the moon is made of green cheese and is inhabited by lizard people
If there was any evidence for that whatsoever then maybe you'd have something vaguely resembling a point.
> you get a majority of regular people together and out vote them out
Which does not happen when the incumbent rich and powerful control virtually all mass media and strongly influence the pool of candidates for political offices. Said rich and powerful are quite content to manipulate people like you into condemning those who dared to at least try to prevent the untold death and suffering instead of, you know, the very people putting their own wealth and power above humanity's survival. Said rich and powerful are also quite content to limit democratic options to that effect. "Choose between ignoring the problem or paying lipservice to it" is not a reasonable choice.
> and stunts and behaviors and extremism are highly unlikely to change that
Asking nicely hasn't changed that, either.
And I didn't say that it was or pretend it either.
> If there was any evidence for that whatsoever then maybe you'd have something vaguely resembling a point.
I gave you exactly as much evidence as you gave me for a thesis that is approximately as rational: e.g. millions BILLIONS of deaths. There's climate change and there's acting like chicken little.
> Asking nicely hasn't changed that, either.
and that is the epitome of having a tantrum. I didn't get what I wanted by following the rules WHICH WERE UNFAIR so I started lashing out and blathering.
Listen, it's great to be passionate about a worthy cause. But you have to meet people where they are. YOU have to bring the debate to them with facts, not just say "well you're an idiot if you can't see what is plainly...". You can't expect to solve any problem at all with anarchy.
Firstly, you haven't asked nicely, nor either defended the dire urgency of your idea. Secondly, "asking nicely hasn't changed that either". YET. Patience is a thing that is probably foreign to the people slicing tires and chaining themselves to bridges but it's something that you will learn.
Your quibbling over the tactics of activists demonstrates rather plainly otherwise.
> I gave you exactly as much evidence as you gave me
https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2108146119
> for a thesis that is approximately as rational: e.g. millions BILLIONS of deaths
Those are indeed the stakes.
> There's climate change and there's acting like chicken little.
There's being uninformed and there's being in active denial.
> and that is the epitome of having a tantrum
Says the one playing defense for butthurt millionaires. "I didn't get to take off in my plane because those big meanie hippies blocked the runway which is SO UNFAIR so I called the police to arrest them and haul them away on buses because their lives matter less than my convenience and comfort"
> YOU have to bring the debate to them with facts
The facts are widely available, and are well-understood by most people. They are unfortunately ignored by the tiny minority of people who actually have any capability whatsoever to stop our planet's destruction, and we're all condemned to suffer for it.
> Firstly, you haven't asked nicely
Yes I have, as have plenty of others. It didn't work, because the ones actively contributing to the problem are the ones with a vested interest in ignoring us; their material wealth matters more than human lives.
> Patience is a thing that is probably foreign to the people slicing tires and chaining themselves to bridges
We're already past the point of no return. At this point climate change response is about mitigating further damage, and every second wasted means more damage, more suffering, more death. Climate activists have been extraordinarily patient given the circumstances - and the consequences of hand-wringing over people recognizing a dire situation for what it is is something all of us will learn, the hard way.
Like, if you think climate activists now lack patience, wait until mobs are banging down your door for every last scrap of food and potable water they can find amid global famine. You'll be thinking back fondly on how politely those activists chained themselves to bridges.
Plenty of rational people are working the problem. The paper you linked said: "There is ample evidence that climate change could become catastrophic.". I have no problem with believing it might go that way either. But you're no a climate scientist and you aren't the judge of what is definitely going to happen.
But you seem to think it's drastic enough to justify and defend killing? That's crazy. I'd rather (maybe) starve in 10 years than see a bunch of extremist bullies taking things into their own hands now. It's a breakdown in society, but not due to any crisis but imagined in your own head (likely in future or not, it hasn't happened).
One of us is brainwashed and we won't agree on who. All I can say is that one side has a reasonable code of ethics and one side is basically anarchy and terrorism. Guess what I won't ever accept - not climate change - but thinking that your motives are ever right enough to overrule right and wrong. That's far more dangerous than putin with nukes, 3 degrees C and china. And it's more dangerous sooner.
Now, if you really do believe all of what you said, instead of chaining yourself to a bridge, how about you quit your 1st world job, get rid of your cars, air conditioning, etc. Get rid of your own carbon footprint which is roughly the size of Ethiopia, crawl in a hole, and wait it out. But don't bug the rest of us. If you are right, you'll inherit what's left of the earth. If you're right it's imminent, so it won't take long. I don't tell you what you should believe. I don't defend the rich either but I do defend everyone's right to live within the law and make decisions on their own - you are not the lawfully elected climate czar.
If that means society might be doomed, so be it. Because if we go your route, it's 100% already gone.
You are clearly unaware of what the words "irrational", "narcissist", and "extremist" mean.
> A paper that explores what might happen is not evidence.
A paper that explores what is increasingly likely to happen as the very people with the power and influence necessary to mitigate further climatological destruction is absolutely evidence. People are already dying in growing numbers from heat waves. People are already feeling the effects of worsening droughts. People are already being invaded over dwindling natural resources.
The people in those private jets are either somehow entirely uninformed about the gravity of the situation or else are aware but simply don't care. Either one is unacceptable.
> But you seem to think it's drastic enough to justify and defend killing?
I strongly suspect, based on the available evidence, that it's drastic enough for people to be justifiably agitated about it. "Oh mister millionaire, would you pretty please stop poisoning our water and atmosphere and soil?"
> I'd rather (maybe) starve in 10 years than see a bunch of extremist bullies taking things into their own hands now.
Whether you like it or not, you're increasingly likely to end up with both the longer the rich and powerful continue to put their own wealth and power before the rest of us.
> one side has a reasonable code of ethics
A code of ethics that puts billionaires' wealth before human life is in no way reasonable.
> That's far more dangerous than putin with nukes, 3 degrees C and china.
If you sincerely believe that some hippies engaging in vandalism (at worst) is more dangerous than even one of those existential threats to humankind (let alone all three), then I pray you someday receive the reality check you so desperately need.
> Now, if you really do believe all of what you said, instead of chaining yourself to a bridge, how about you quit your 1st world job, get rid of your cars, air conditioning, etc.
Those things are extraordinarily tiny compared to the scale of destruction from corporate sources. Climate change is a systemic issue, requiring systemic solutions.
> If you are right, you'll inherit what's left of the earth.
If I'm right, there won't be much to inherit.
> I don't defend the rich either
You've spent the entirety of this thread demonstrating otherwise.
> I do defend everyone's right to live within the law
Legality != morality.
> Because if we go your route, it's 100% already gone.
"Wah hippies blocking rich people from taking off in their private jets is the end of society! I just want to plug my ears and pretend everything's fine, but those rude millennials keep reminding me that humanity's actions have consequences! Wah!"
You have been misled. The sooner you understand this, the sooner you will mature into an asset to humanity's survival in the coming decades rather than continue to immaturely impede it. It doesn't seem likely you ever will given our conversation, and I am truly sorry that your heart is so hardened that you would demand politeness over justice, and would rather starve than permit your fellow man to do anything even slightly uncomfortable to the rich and powerful in defense of one's own rights to life, liberty, and property.
Martin Luther King, Jr. had some choice words about the "white moderate" and the preference for negative peace over positive peace. Said choice words come to mind here.
please, chicken little. Climate is important. you're idea of how to get people on your side is laughable. you're your own worst enemy.
extremism solves nothing. if you think it's ok to deprive someone else's rights, then you are an extremist and a terrorist.
if you are worried about the environment, then why do you say "extraordinarily tiny" - it doesn't matter. you aren't in charge of those billionaire's lives. but you are in charge of your own. how does anyone take you seriously when you say your decadent western lifestyle is a "tiny" problem? YOU are the problem as much as anyone.
> Legality != morality.
in this case the actually are the same. Eco-terrorism is both immoral and illegal.
it's a good, good thing that the real larger environmentalism movement is better at advocating for it's cause than you are. You aren't helping.
> it’s rhetorical
look, lets say you are right about the seriousness and evilness of big oil. the reason the eco-terrorists are worse than them is that instead of making it more likely to effect the changes you want, they are hurting your own cause. disrupting thousands of peoples lives, endangering and killing people is not going to get more people to help you. the people doing these stunts are not helping you here.
https://www.foxnews.com/media/physicist-tells-tucker-carlson...
Companies do make more promises they can’t keep.
https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2022/02/07/study-worlds-biggest-fir...
The point we really would like you to understand is that doing meaningless pointless things that accomplish nothing is wasting everyone’s time.
If anything, people are making the problem worse.
Peter Thiel won’t be giving up flying private anytime soon.
Why would you bother asking anyone to skip a flight?
How about people take a math class along with climate change
1/50th is quite a large percent. Lol let's angle this another way... Would you be ok with ending the life of 2% of earth's population? I mean it's only roughly 156 million out of 7.6 billion. Drop in the ocean right? Micro percentage!
Hasn’t this all been explained before?
Wouldn’t it be easier to replace 8500 coal plants and save a lot more emissions?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal-fired_power_station
No one would even know their electricity came from another source.
“Coal-fired power stations emit over 10 Gt of carbon dioxide each year,[4] about one fifth of world greenhouse gas emissions, so are the single largest cause of climate change”
So, using that ridiculous example of 156 million people, multiply it by 10.
That’s CHECKMATE!!!
Private jet users are exactly the people who push climate change policies but feel zero impact of their agenda. We have seen this over and over again from the private jet parks at climate change conferences and so on.
Them having to use commercial planes would be the first time they feel some inconvenience by the policies they shape and push forward. Let's see how fast the anti private jet topic dies off.
I cannot strongly disagree with your point. But by that logic, targeting Rolls-Royce/Bentley/Aston Martin drivers (or, more specifically, owners, given they are likely to have chaffeurs), as well as house owners in Calabasas (SoCal) and Los Altos Hills (Bay Area) would work just as well.
Jets tend to congregate conveniently at a small number of public locations. Their per capita emissions are egregious; their missions are frivolous. Perfect target.
Fair point about Bentleys, but not about Calabasas. You would protest Calabasas mansion owners in Calabasas, South California. Same with Los Altos Hills mansion owners in Los Altos Hills neighborhood in Bay Area. Those two aren't brands, they are areas/neighborhoods.
The problem with activists is that they are low information zealots who, for the most part, are ignorant useful idiots. Sorry to be so harsh, but I believe this to be the case for most any domain where, for the most part, young "activists" are the result of finding people who never ask tough questions, can't evaluate matters objectively, are driven by emotion and are supremely susceptible to indoctrination.
Want to get a sense of just how dumb it is to go after private jets or the entire air transportation industry? Here:
https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/each-countrys-share-co2-emi...
Scroll down to the pie chart titled "Top Annual CO2 Emitting Countries, 2019".
here's a simple reality that requires nothing more than being able to add and subtract:
If the United States --all of it-- were to evaporate from this planet tomorrow --all of it, gone, no more CO2 emissions-- you would only cut down CO2 inputs to the atmosphere by 14%.
Stopping private jets or the entire airline industry is a rounding error compared to all of the US evaporating tomorrow.
OK, let's get rid of the US and China. That will only reduce CO2 inputs by 43%.
Stopping private jets? As an idea, this is between ridiculous and demented.
And, BTW, these numbers aren't even correct. You cannot bring down CO2 inputs to zero. You just can't.
Why?
Well, the simplest explanation is that you have forest and other fires that would still be there and constantly contribute CO2 to the atmosphere. In California alone, one year of fires is equivalent to nearly 20 years of emissions savings. If we all evaporate from this planet --all of humanity-- it will probably take somewhere in the order of 100K yeas for atmospheric CO2 to drop by 100 ppm (we have accurate data on this, it isn't a guess).
Where did the CO2 in the forest come from?
_I've added two links but a search can provide many more._
I would like to respond to some of these frequent critiques explain a bit about why such actions and legislation continue happening.
1) "Only X% Percent of Emissions… No _real_ effect"
A frequent talking point of such critiques has to do with the extremely small percentage CO2-equivalent reduction that might result from the given action. (An example of this is present in a sibling comment which implies that fighting climate change is futile, since even the United States and China combined only account for 43% of glocal emissions. I haven't verified the numbers.)
Given the vast mass of CO2 that human actions put into the climate, it is unreasonable to expect single piece of legislation or action can to solve this problem. Only the very largest pieces of legislation or actions can even be expected to make a noticable dent.
To claim that actions or legislation are innefective because they are relatively minor compared to the size of the problem can be reduced to asserting that large problems cannot be solved, since solving them involves mutliple steps. This is false.
2) "Misguided hypocritical performance artist clowns"
These types of critiques are applied mostly to activists but occasionally to legislators as well. Actions that make the news seem especially created _to_ make the news, so it seems reasonable to consider them performances of some sort or another.
It is also worth considering _why_ these are such performances. My impression is that activists are actively seeking to create media attention for an issue that has typically not received the media coverage it is due.
(For example, according to the IPCC, the most populated areas of the country where I currently live will be underwater in the next century, but the near certainty of this never makes the news except for rare occasions when it floods or when activists block the airport.)
If this is the case, blocking private jets is a convenient rhetorical springboard for garnering media attention rather than the main idea behind action. The point was to "earn" media coverage of the climate crisis, not to block planes. Given that this action was briefly on the frontpage of hacker news and my local news, it seems to have worked.
Well-intentioned and direct criticism of the headline, whether that is blocking private jets or people gluing themselves to paintings, feeds algorithms, helps the activists' end goals, and misses the point.
(Scott Alexander touched on this in 2014. [3])
----
Many dismissive comments on HN come from individuals whom seem to have opinions at odds with the scientific consensus. Others would prefer to see activism or legislation that makes a larger impact, is more effective, and is less disruptive.
If you are in the later category, please consider asking yourself what actions you have personally taken make a meaningful difference for the climate crisis. Please also ask yourself whether your actions can scale to other people, and what it would take to scale them (media coverage, network effects, etc.)
_I personally consider voting, lobbying, and dietary changes to be effective but don't believe that they scale very well._
Activism and legislation are both complicated fields existing within larger climatic and political systems.
If you have not recently attempted to take such actions, found them effective, and attempted to scale them enough to generate some network effects (via media coverage or otherwise), I would personally doubt your ability to provide more useful analysis than the people doing work in this field.
---
The people behind such actions and legislation are trying to create positive change. Sometimes they fail. Other times, they succeed. It's clear to me that many commentators do not understand how or why this is the case.
In my opinion, "Why?" questions may be helpful. "What!" type reactions are less so.
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25134077 [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33359991 [3]: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage...
It's much more likely that the change these activists want to create will make the world a worse place to live than without it.
The generous interpretation is that fighting against greenhouse gases is as honourable as fighting against CFC. But you listen to these activists for two seconds and their real goal is to "dismantle capitalism" and that gets no sympathy from me.
That's their goal because the fundamental aspect of capitalism - i.e. the idea that profit maximization for its own sake is the top priority, above all else - is largely what has led to the currently-escalating climate crisis. It's kind of hard to be a climate activist and not be critical of the very ideology responsible for climate destruction.