“These activists seem sincere, and clearly they feel like less intrusive tactics aren’t getting the job done,” ........ what right do activists have to destroy things they don’t own and didn’t build to get their message across? Or to lay in the middle of the street because they can’t reverse the industrial revolution? These tactics are like a guy hitting on a girl, her saying no, and him deciding to hold her down and rape her to get his message across since his “less intrusive” words weren’t getting the job done of him getting his way.
At some point people need to accept that if they don’t make a convincing argument they don’t get to throw a fit like a toddler. Plus, all of these things are actual crimes. If law enforcement won’t enforce the law, sooner or later, everyday people tired of the 💩 will do it for them, and that’s when things get really ugly.
Destroying artwork, dumping milk out in grocery stores, and blocking highways doesn’t work to accomplish anything aside from showing the world these grown babies have parents that never required them to grow the hell up.
What's wrong with these people, didn't they hear old Joe is all out for protecting our climate? However, what is confusing is his throwing money, millions and millions of dollars at Ukraine, escalating the war, extending the war, and taking the chance of creating a nuclear holocaust that will destroy all life on this planet. Better they should march against that.
No matter your beliefs climate change is a reality, and presents a threat to all life forms on this planet. That being said the tactics employed by these activists too often evoke anger in others, and their good intentions become very counter productive. When I went to college climate change wasn't up for discussion and neither was it part of the curriculum in HS or JHS and that denial took place through the last century even though it is recognized as the century of the environment and evokes names like Rachel Carlson, and her book, Silent Spring. As a result you have generations of people who are ill informed and are climate change deniers. I wish the educational system had made a greater effort to inform students on this issue, since these mass protests, even on a global level, turn people away. It also has to be understood that changes that will alter our present course will take time. Joe Biden's approach is untimely.
You inadvertently undermined your own point and made the "climate change deniers" point for them. Rachel Carson was wrong, and did more harm than good, but her book evoked an emotional response and thus spawned a movement. Emotional belief without facts is religion. Another example is the environmentalists that protest nuclear power and force nuclear plants to shut down to make way for solar panels and wind. Solar and wind require fossil fuel generation as a backup. Nuclear does not. Thus, the push for solar and wind extend the human need to burn fossil fuels into perpetuity. Nevermind the environmental damage caused by solar panels thenselves.
Carson did more damage than any other single individual concerned with the "environment." The message is always the same. "There's an emergency. Only we, the enlightened, care." It seems bird eggs had thinner shells if the female had eaten mosquitoes killed by DDT. So, DDT was banned. Hooray!
Except the price paid was in more mosquitoes, biting more children, transmitting more malaria, and we can measure the price paid in 500,000 additional unneeded deaths of children every year. But the children are small and brown and out of sight, so in this (and other cases) "we care" about the wrong thing, and others pay the price.
Carson, David Brower, Farley Mowat, Greta, the list goes on. This has been a tactic of the environment left for ages; the need to lie for the "greater good." And each time it comes back and bites them in the ass.
You're just plain wrong on this, Bill. I don't know where you're getting your information, but it certainly wasn't the book Silent Spring.
DDT is banned in the US, but it is not banned for pest control globally. The UN, which only got involved with establishing a worldwide standard in 2004, made a specific exemption for pest vector control.
From the Wiki on DDT:
"The Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants, which took effect in 2004, put a global ban on several persistent organic pollutants, and restricted DDT use to vector control. The convention was ratified by more than 170 countries. Recognizing that total elimination in many malaria-prone countries is currently unfeasible absent affordable/effective alternatives, the convention exempts public health use within World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines from the ban.[62] Resolution 60.18 of the World Health Assembly commits WHO to the Stockholm Convention's aim of reducing and ultimately eliminating DDT.[63] Malaria Foundation International states, "The outcome of the treaty is arguably better than the status quo going into the negotiations. For the first time, there is now an insecticide which is restricted to vector control only, meaning that the selection of resistant mosquitoes will be slower than before."[64]
Despite the worldwide ban, agricultural use continued in India,[65] North Korea, and possibly elsewhere.[20] As of 2013, an estimated 3,000 to 4,000 tons of DDT were produced for disease vector control, including 2,786 tons in India.[66] DDT is applied to the inside walls of homes to kill or repel mosquitoes. This intervention, called indoor residual spraying (IRS), greatly reduces environmental damage. It also reduces the incidence of DDT resistance.[67] ..." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDT
A passage that alludes to another thing that Rachel Carson- a trained aquatic biologist- got right: insects evolve to develop resistance to chemical pesticides, and the more frequently they're used, the more intractable of a problem that resistance tends to get.
I do what I can to avoid Wiki (fill in the blank). It's largely a popularity-based source. I do go to the citations and references and often find something useful that way.
People get Rachel Carson wrong. Carson did not advocate for a total ban on DDT- most certainly not as a means of addressing public health problems like malaria mosquitos!
From the Wiki entry for Rachel Carson, including reference to a direct quote by her:
"...In regards to the pesticide DDT, Carson never actually called for an outright ban. Part of the argument she made in Silent Spring was that even if DDT and other insecticides had no environmental side effects, their indiscriminate overuse was counter-productive because it would create insect resistance to the pesticide(s), making the pesticides useless in eliminating the target insect populations:
No responsible person contends that insect-borne disease should be ignored. The question that has now urgently presented itself is whether it is either wise or responsible to attack the problem by methods that are rapidly making it worse. The world has heard much of the triumphant war against disease by controlling insect vectors of infection. However, it has heard little of the other side of the story—the defeats, the short-lived triumphs that now strongly support the alarming view that the insect enemy has been made actually stronger by our efforts. Even worse, we may have destroyed our very means of fighting.[63]
Carson further noted that "Malaria programmes are threatened by resistance among mosquitoes"[64] and emphasized the advice given by the director of Holland's Plant Protection Service: "Practical advice should be 'Spray as little as you possibly can' rather than 'Spray to the limit of your capacity' ... Pressure on the pest population should always be as slight as possible."[65]..." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_Carson
Have you read Carson's book Silent Spring? I have. It called attention to how casually chlorinated hydrocarbon pesticides were being used for inappropriate purposes like massive aerial spraying of woodlands in attempts to stop invasive pests like gypsy moths, and use of mass quantities in efforts to eradicate fire ants. A fool's errand.
Rachel Carson also pointed out that there was often complete disregard for the amounts used, neglect about precautions for workers, and no attention given to limiting the use of pesticides during inappropriate weather conditions and seasons. She was in the forefront of arguing in favor of biological alternatives to kill insect pests, and those alternatives have often proved much more effective at controlling insect pest outbreaks than chemical sprays. Examples of the superiority of biological control measures over chemical pesticides include the present-day efforts to control the gypsy moth and the fire ant. And the boll weevil, whose infestations once made cotton agriculture one of the heaviest pesticide users, is now on the verge of being eradicated from the US on the basis of ecological researches into the requirements of its life cycle. There's still some pesticide use, but it's been incorporated into a larger strategy that centers on getting rid of all cotton plants after harvesting, which deprives the boll weevil of the habitat it requires to thrive and reproduce. https://www.stltoday.com/boll-weevil-eradication-closes-in-on-success/article_70c67ccf-cae1-5238-8af4-49e4645a4dfb.html
David MacKay's final interview before cancer got him. He makes your point that if you believe in anthropogenic global warming (I don't; he does; doesn't matter here.) you must still be rational in how you address it.
And never mind the damage done by nuclear power plants. Go talk to people who live near them. I talked to people in Braidwood, IL . I did and the picture is ugly
Yes, I am amazed that those who advocate for nuclear power are delusional in not realizing that they are NUCLEAR. We are concerned about nuclear war but we're not concerned about placing a nuclear facility in our neighborhoods?
I can remember when they were trying to dispose of spent nuclear waste in the 1970s and they couldn't find anywhere safe to put it! Every community said, "Not in my back yard!" Finally they put it into the oceans in (presumably) safe containers. Of course the ocean species didn't get a voice.
You do understand that there is a big difference between nuclear weapons and nuclear power, no? Nuclear weapons depend on detonation. Nuclear power depends on the natural radioactive decay of Uranium and the heat that generates in order to boil water and turn it into steam. That steam is then sent through turbines to generate electricity. In a natural gas or coal powered plant you burn the fuel to generate steam that then is sent through turbines. It's the same basic principal in both cases. You boil water and create electricity.
There's no risk of a detonation. There is risk of overboiling water and superheating it to the point that it blows out, but it's a tiny risk. Again, this is the steam blowing up the plant, not the nuclear fuel. There's no mushroom cloud. There's no fallout. The only real risk is to any cleanup crews that have to go in and clean up the mess. Nuclear power is safe. And yes, I would welcome a nuclear power plant in my backyard over miles and miles and miles of wind turbines or solar panel fields it would take to generate the same amount of electricity.
Just as an aside.... when I was in college in the early 70s, the big bogeyman climate change was that the next Ice Age was on its way. So fifty years later, the climate change is the “ polar” opposite? So the Ice Age thing was miscalculated?
I can tell that you were never really informed about climate change based on your commentary here, since teachers were no very informative on this subject back then. In the 70's it was barely discussed if referenced if at all. By the way some fifty years later a lot of information has been accumulated to substantiate the reality of climate change. I do think Joe's ways of going about it really sucks.
When you assume.... actually I believe it was on the cover of Time or Newsweek Magazine which back then were highly respected news magazines. Fifty years later is actually not a lot of information as either was the fifty years of information on which the climate scientists at that time based their reality of cooling temperatures and expanding polar caps. But yes, I was a 21 year old college kid who didn’t take that threat too seriously and seeing as the science then didn’t pan out, I dismissed the predicted frigid temps. Fifty years of climate study is like the earth blinking once. The big difference between then and now is that “climate change” has become a very lucrative emotionally fueled industry.
No Martha, not true. I wish it were, but it's not. Much more evidence has accumulated since the 70''s. Temperatures are warming around the globe. When the industrial revolution came about they were concerned about the effects of carbon dioxide on the environment, so it's not even a recent concern. I still feel there is so much denial because people were not educated in their science classrooms on this issue, then you have the oil companies implementing campaigns of denial, as did the cigarette companies when they tied smoking to cancer. Lots of lies. Personally I think Biden's agenda in this area should have been put off, since it's a time when many are feeling vulnerable after dealing with a pandemic. not to mention the lying the democrats pushed when it came to Trump. I also don't approve of the way people go about expressing their concern over this issue which turns people off. That purple haired brat with the can of tomato juice really made me angry. We have to do something, but changes don't happen overnight, and require decades to implement.
Fran, May I respectfully ask that you read this terrific piece from Prof Richard Lindzen, of MIT (my Alma Mater). See if it changes your mind, or at least your certitude. Best, Tom
Interesting article, but it has been said, no PREACHED, that SCIENCE has come to a consensus that no one dare question.
II. SCIENCE DEMONSTRATES THERE IS NO CLIMATE-RELATED RISK CAUSED BY FOSSIL FUELS AND CO2, AND THEREFORE NO RELIABLE SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE SUPPORTING THE PROPOSED RULE
We are a part of the complex system and cannot help but affect it. Can you list the 100 most powerful actors in the system? How does a negligible contribution of a relatively inefficient greenhouse gas rank as the most significant and powerful actor? I don't deny climate change; instead, I am a skeptic. All scientists are.
Bill if you are really interested in this subject there are many sources available. Whether you believe it or not does not change the reality that climate change is happening and the environment on a world wide level is being affected in a negative way. The US, and China, especially China, since it produces carbon emissions almost three times greater then ours, but all industrial country's need to implement change. The overall temperature in the world has gone up almost 2 degrees in a little more then a hundred years, oceans are warming, glaciers are melting. research it. I am not ignorant of the natural world, the environment and all that. It was my major in school, taught it, teach it. No one is telling you not to hop on a plane, turn off your lights or dump your car for one that works on electricity. I think it's absurd that Biden in the midst of political turmoil, a pandemic, and rising costs, etc, decided to deal with climate change by shutting down the Keystone pipeline, then implement a moratorium on new oil and gas leasing on federal lands while a quarter of our oil and gas is gotten that way. All that has cost elevated gas prices and I've listened to people cursing him out at the pump. Then talk about electric cars at 60 thousand a pop. It's like telling a fat lady who just lost her husband that she has to immediately go on a diet and cut back on the wine she enjoys with her evening meal. It feels like he wants to sabotage the movement . It takes time to bring the kind of change we need, as well as educating people on this issue. I also don't approve of purple haired brats throwing tomato soup at my beloved van Gogh painting, or what many did during the the global climate change week, since it turns people off of the message.
Fran, I'm with you until you make a leap of faith similar to that entailed by religion, from temperatures are rising (no skepticism here on that point) to carbon being at fault. You provide no proof; I've read a good sample of the scientific papers, understand them, and most are pure rubbish. The IPCC is a political, not scientific, body.
The world's top experts in glaciers are in (surprise) Iceland, not New York. They agree that the glaciers in the Northern Hemisphere are shrinking. They point out that those in the southern hemisphere are growing by an equal amount, and the global mass of glaciers is stable.
Follow the money. There are infinite funds available to study the problem of carbon emissions and climate change. As soon as a scientist concludes that there is no significant problem, then there's no follow-on study to be performed, and the scientist must perforce find another crisis.
Don't just look at the past 200 (or even 20 hundred) years. Talk to geologists. The greatest rise in global temperatures took place millions of years before humans existed and amounted to about 18 degrees Fahrenheit in a ten-year period, evidently due to a rupture in an undersea cavity containing methane, a genuinely powerful greenhouse gas. Look at historical records; the earth swings from warm to cool on multiple interlocked cycles. We are currently in an abnormal warm period and have been since the Little Ice Age.
Of course there are many natural causes which elevate the global temperature like volcanic eruptions, sunlight variations, etc, but when they talk about climate change they are not talking about earth’s climate change due to natural causes, not related to human activity, and have been with us forever, and will be , but their influence is small, or they occur too slowly to explain the the very rapid elevations that are seen today over a very short period of time. Your background isn't in science otherwise you wouldn't be using this time worn explanation of why climate change isn't so. I am not trying to indoctrinate you just presenting the common consensus among scientists in this field. You are wasting your time in trying to make me believe climate change just ain't so. Science is my background.
I have a simple question for you Fran - how much of the last 200 years of climate change was completely natural versus how much was anthropogenic? Surely you've read enough to know this, right? Otherwise, how can you claim any factual basis for your concern?
Listen curmudgeon, good name for you by the way. since you fail to intimidate me with your lack of charm, and my background is in science, answer your own question and I'll correct any wrong thinking on your part. How's that?
In retrospect, I'm fairly satisfied with most of my American public school education, although admittedly that was 50 years ago. Despite the fact that my early record of superior academic achievement went into a nosedive once I entered 7th grade, and didn't really recover until I was over 30, as a "returning" college student.
I think there are a lot of ways the system could be improved- I'm a longtime John Taylor Gatto fan. And it's undeniable that the public school system has propagandistic aspects; notwithstanding all the bird being whipped over "cancellation" these days as if it were a brand-new thing, it's always been the case that any public school teacher who dares voice pointed objections about ongoing US military interventions or skeptical questions about US foreign policy in their classroom is risking their job security.
fwiw, in 1973, one of my classmates in my public high school (suburban middle-class school district) married one of my high school teachers. iirc, she was impregnated by him in her senior year. It didn't even rate as gossip, just something that happened.
Thinking about it, I'll admit to some idle curiosity about how that worked out for both of them. But I refuse to consider a relationship like that to be deviant or perverted, per se.
Exactly. Someone trying to get to work or having some type of emergency is going to get very violent with these adolescents. Or some driver totally loses it and plows right through them.
You have a right to peaceful protest. You do not have a right to block highways or damage property.
Zero sympathy for these so called protesters. They are narcissistic people saying “ look at me”.
Agree. I tend to think violence and destruction rarely, if ever, actually works over any medium to long time frame. Blocking roads can work, with a sympathetic cause and when well organized, in a meaningful to the actual cause location, and when the protesters remain peaceful. It almost never works when the protesters are acting like bratty children randomly throwing themselves down on random highways causing great frustration to passing motorist that are reminded the brat in the road would like to outlaw the job the passerby’s are driving to in order too feed their family along with their mode of getting to said job.
There are important differences between truckers, who contribute important labor/ services to society, engaging in civil disobedience for the right not to be forced to be injected with a potentially dangerous experimental drug they don’t want to be injected with, and woke doomsday cult climate zealots flinging themselves down on highways, or throwing soup at priceless artwork, demanding the implementation of pro-scarcity policies meant to intentionally starve, freeze, and impoverish hundreds of millions of innocent human beings.
The truckers were seeking reasonable personal freedoms/ civil liberties while the climate zealots are seeking to destroy the lives of complete strangers via demands that aren’t well articulated, can’t ever be met, and arise from the religious worship of faulty climate models that claim to predict temperatures for the next 100-1,000 years yet can’t replicate already observed temperatures over any 10 year time period.
Well articulated and reasonable demands are a key component of successful civil rights movements involving civil disobedience. The reasonableness of the demands under scrutiny is crucial to gaining lasting public support that changes hearts and minds, including mine.
The idea that methods alone should somehow dictate the success or public support of any movement is intellectually lazy, and in the case of actions intended for public nuisance or disruption, has been frequently disproven as a theory. Most attempts to gain attention via self-proclaimed “civil disobedience” for a “cause” ends in a jail sentence and not much else. I am now, and have always, supported equal treatment under the law - something the Canadian truckers were not given in comparison to woke Canadian protesters.
The doomsday climate cult might gain attention from these stunts, but public support will continue to be fleeting at best. Reality gets in the way - A slightly warmer Earth is a greener Earth where more food grows, CO2 is plant food, deaths from weather continue to drop dramatically globally, storm frequency has and severe weather has been mostly declining in recent decades, the oceans have actually risen only 7.4 inch since 1900 (in total - less than a foot - most of the Netherlands is and has been 12-21 feet below sea level). Under scrutiny it doesn’t make much sense to destroy people and the environment now so the “climate” can’t do it down the road. 🤷♀️
As far as the “Earth” goes, it’ll be just fine even if it gets really really warm, and again, most people know this. Many learned in elementary school that during much of the reign of the dinosaurs the Earth was much warmer, both CO2 levels and oxygen levels were much higher, oceans hundreds of meters above where that are today - and life was thriving.
Without the protestor demands withstanding scrutiny, these stunts come across as annoying acts by entitled brats who have too much free time and are spending that free time trying to bully strangers. Unlike the truckers, the followers of these doomsday “climate” cults aren’t going to gain popular support because their demands can’t withstand genuine scrutiny or actual outcomes. There is a reason its Michael Shellenberger who has the largest Substack on the climate and is quietly gaining popularity.
I assume you supported Truckers' Protest, they used the same tactics. What right did they have? Traffic jamming, even bridge jamming and somehow everyone was cheering.
The Truckers had a sympathetic cause and, under the Canadian Charter rights, a legal right to protest as they did.
The civil rights movement and suffrage were also peaceful protests (on the side of the protesters). The protesters in these cases could articulate what they wanted and gained popular support as a result of well-articulated reasonable demands that demanded nothing of others beyond equal treatment under the law as human beings. The protestors were entirely peaceful and, like the Canadian truckers, didn’t destroy things or demand others give up their lives and futures to accommodate their demands that centered around personal freedoms and equal rights.
The climate alarmists can’t articulate anything that will gain support. Their demands range from forced starvation of billions to forced abortions (which is what government population management is). The climate alarmists contribute nothing. They can’t articulate anything beyond nonsense dystopian babble. They have no idea what they are talking about. They offer zero solutions besides pushing crap to kill and impoverish a lot a people.
Anyone can claim they are engaging in civil disobedience. A car jacker can claim they are trying to combat wealth inequality. If anyone is going to block a highway in the name of a cause they darn well better have a sympathetic cause that gains popular support because civil disobedience that fails to garner sympathy is just plain old breaking the law. The climate alarmists are spoiled brats plain old breaking the law and it doesn’t begin to help their supposed cause.
Do you honestly believe it’s moral or realistic to assert those engaging in attention seeking criminal antics are the ones who get to decide if society see them as engaging in “righteous civil disobedience” regardless of the facts or objective reality?
As you well know, I am one single person and I alone cannot possibly decide what causes do and do not gain material support from the general public. On a personal level, we should differentiate hooligans from the righteous on the basis of our support, or lack there of, for the “cause” being promoted via illegal antics that often come at a very real cost to others that have nothing to do with the situation.
Blocking traffic includes blocking emergency vehicles like ambulances- and also drivers handling personal emergencies, at which point it's no longer fun and games. Not a tactic I endorse.
Ethical civil disobedience always reckons with the liability of penalties as a consequence of breaking the law. All too many young activists nowadays have been lulled into some cloud-castle fantasy that "civil disobedience" is a foolproof legal defense, and that any activism taken in the course of "redress of grievances" is indemnified against criminal charges!
This false impression has been encouraged by the tactical response of many locales where mass demonstrations have taken place- to dismiss all charges against demonstrators as long as their offenses are limited to "trespassing" or "obstructing traffic". The local courts in cases like those aren't dismissing the charges because the arrests were invalid, they're doing it for their own convenience.
While I can't stand Marcuse's ideas about "repressive tolerance" as a catch-all social explanation, I have to concede that the concept isn't entirely invalid: in any situation where it's taken for granted in advance all around that practically all of the arrested demonstrators are simply going to be detained for a few hours before being set free with no charges, the demonstrators are merely pretending to engage in acts of civil disobedience, and the police are merely pretending to arrest them.
I know I heard from one trucker in an interview and he said they were being very careful to keep roads open for emergency services. I think they went too far with the honking initially but they stopped that too.
Ironically, Capital Beltway traffic is already so prone to unscheduled slowdowns (and others you can practically set your watch by) that the trucker's "slowdown" protest hardly registered as an obstacle. A fact that also calls into question the "tactic" of pedestrians blocking a highway for the purpose of protesting climate change, something something...what's the specific target- petro-powered vehicles? the disinclination of commuters to use Metro, which is only a hybrid solution anyway, given that it usually still requires an auto commute?
Exactly how "effective" is blocking the freeway as a tactic to protest personal auto use, given that the drivers who receive notice about the obstacle will simply re-route off of an exit to the network of surface streets, often requiring a greater travel distance than the usual routine?
So why do it, then? To post videos on Instagram?
Any time someone wants to pursue a plan of political activism, the first thing to do is to be clear about goals, and the be clear about tangible benefits resulting from the action other than to the personal egos of the activists. Which starts by being real about it, that there are status bennies (or at least the promise of them) for the individual personal ego of the activists. Activists put themselves onstage, in the role of "hero of the people." So admit that upfront, because it's required for clarity. Because there has to be more to it than that, hmm? There had better be.
The next thing to do is to take personal ego out of the picture, and consider the benefits of a project for everyone else. Be clear about messaging. An example of an unclear idea is implicitly blaming everyone driving a car on the freeway (who doesn't own an electric vehicle.) That is not the place to start.
Have the protesters ever considered mounting a lobbying effort to have a sufficiently adequate fleet of circulating LNG or EV-powered light buses and vans offering door to door commuter service to Metro, with subscriber-based door to door service on subscriber phone request in daylight non-peak hours? Door to door dispatch service available, room for cargo like groceries and shopping, with driver assistance. Subscriber model, like $100-$200 a year, less for senior citizens. (Leave taxicabs, Uber, and Lyft for the night shift.) That idea has been around for at least 40 years, but no one could figure out how to make it work back in the 1980s, so it was forgotten about. Now we're well into the portable phone era, the LNG/EV-powered fleet era, and also the era when the benefits of lowering auto traffic per se can plainly be viewed as a worthwhile public investment. Consult with some traffic engineers and professional drivers, and figure it out. Makes a lot more sense than any damn UAV fantasy game.
I guarantee, if anyone- I don't care who- could clearly map out how a diversified public transit option using light buses and vans offering last-mile & cargo service could relieve a sizeable percentage of the auto traffic currently on the road in traffic-choked cities and suburbs, the locals would go for it whether it's Washington DC or Houston.
Even if they're already regular riders, practically any suburban commuter is disconcerted by the requirement to either drive and park or walk-wait-ride-transfer on a pre-scheduled fixed route before boarding at a metro station. And lugging something larger than a backpack or briefcase is something between difficult and impossible.
If they could get door-to-station service, or door-to-door to/from a market or mall, they'd go for it.
There's entirely too much rote formulaic emphasis in the pop media on "Americans love affair with their cars" as an explanation for the failures of public transit. There are a lot of cities where the automobile option isn't about love, it's just a flat necessity, and a hated one. And it's entirely possible to love the freedom of a personal automobile and still prefer public transit, because the "freedom" of a job commute that requires 3 hours a day harnessed to 2 tons of gadgets that you're required to drive is really dubious.
(I wonder how much traffic would benefit from an overall 20% reduction in vehicle use, or by a 30% reduction at rush hour. How many hours of life would become less tedious, for everyone involved?)
Public transit needs to be as close to door to door as possible, and it also needs to allow safe storage for cargo- because that's a big reason for people to go out. For groceries, if nothing else. But grocery shopping doesn't work very well, bus-stop to bus-stop. But that's the limit of public transit service. So the primary impediments to increasing public transit ridership are practical, not about American individualist love affairs with their cars.
my point is I support civil disobedience, but one has to accept the consequences whether that is being arrested and charged or dealing with a desperate motorist trying to get to his pregnant wife.
they seem to think that the “rightness” of their actions invalidate any prosecution, which, in turn, invalidates the purpose of civil disobedience.
Being in a prison cell does nothing unless you can flood the prisons. Even then it's out of sight, out of mind. But usually a cause which can summon that kind of support can more easily go into the streets and annoy people enough just by demonstrating.
The painting was protected not exactly by glass, but more like a glaze, which an art restorer friend tells me can be made of various substances (including glass), and though designed to protect against abrasion isn’t exactly tested for soup toss. It worked out okay, this time, but these dopes couldn’t have been sure of that and can’t be going forward. Secondly, they choice an “iconic painting” for a reason. They didn’t throw soup on a statue to Ada Walter or on an indigenous graveyard. They picked a painting because they imagine it a meaningless bourgeois affectation, thinking about its price-tag in dollars as opposed to its actual worth, which they obviously don’t understand or recognize. That’s why this episode is worrisome, because it fits the pattern of people in the social media age being blind to the value of anything except as symbols within a certain political framework, of the Iliad or Beethoven's 9th being useless except as means of perpetuating the decadent before-times. Attacking art is symbolic.
One person's priceless symbol pointing to the indescribable eternal is another's idol to a false god. Who among us has the singular truth? No one. We are all blind men, each holding a small poece of the elephant, declaring that we know its truth. And this is why we must not destroy art, but contemplate it, for each moment betweenart and a unique perceiver is a moment of *creation* - and bring opportunity for a changed perception and thus changed action. Shutdown of highways used by many for living their lives as best as they can in the moment and destruction of globally known art are the two sides of the same anti-creative, anti-life coin. Climate activists begin to communicate themselves to be anti-creative- which is only a hair's breadth away from anti-Creator. It is tragic that they cannot see this. I believe THIS is one primary failure of how we've been educating our young ones: in the misapprehension of the power we humans have over Creation. The sad irony of hearing Indigenous peoples invoked here is not lost on me.
Who exactly are they saving the world FOR? Certainly not the people in the blocked cars, or anyone who values artistic genius and wishes to see it preserved, or anyone ( my guess) who doesn’t sign up to their vague, self-righteous manifesto. And I think that all of them have been emboldened by the fact that there were no consequences for burning a police station to the ground or pulling down statues of historical significance. Will these people be prosecuted? I doubt it.
As a theatre artist, I can attest to what you’re saying. Plays today have become proxies for ideological battle: what gets produced, what doesn’t, who gets to tell what stories, who doesn’t. The intrinsic worth of a work of theatrical literature as a testament to the ever developing and ongoing discovery of human nature is now a thing of the past, and now they only serve as flashpoints for cancellations and culture war bomb-throwing. Look no dither than this:
Well, you read The Fountainhead, didn't you? Minus the bodice-ripping parts, the book can be summed up as an exposition on the right of a creator to do as he pleases with their works, and the abhorrence of having their individual creativity interfered with in any way by meddlers and critics. It's a fictional set piece in bold outline; Ayn Rand was allergic to nuance. But it's a mostly valid work. (Whereas Atlas Shrugged, John Galt etc. and the rest of it, that's just solipsism for wannabe Nietszchean Superboys.)
My take: anyone can throw a pail of soup. That act isn't elevated just because it's accompanied by a statement of elevated intent.
Or American Statues in 2020. For what? Of course, sooner or later, one of these lunatics is going to get Wile E. Coyote’d on I-95, and become another hero of the left.
Reminds me. I've been wanting to order a pair of ACME rocket powered roller skates. The user reviews are nearly 4.5 stars. Free delivery with Amazon Prime.
Granted, the highway was closed at night, but that happened more than two years ago and, while the protestor did become a hero of the left to some degree, it seems to have been lost in the shuffle in the "I support the current thing" mindset that runs rampant.
Not trying to be dismissive of what happened to the protestor, just observing that what happened has been forgotten by many.
I don't mind a bit of civil disobedience now and then. As a newspaper reporter long ago, I and my dog were told to leave the Boston Commons or face charges during a rowdy anti-war protest.
The mounted police officer and I had a heated conversation, which ended when I gave him two choices. Arrest me and my dog, in which case he'll likely be bitten by my German Shepard, and I'll become a hero for all the press, as I compose my account of police brutality for the my editors back in Bangor, Maine.
The war our government started in Vietnam was the tail end of our stop the commies efforts. As usual we made more enemies than friends back then. Come to think of it, our goverment continues to make more enemies than friends.
What I observed in that video was a group of people who have not carefully read all the research papers and reports by the UN, and yes I have read all of the recent reports from the UN as well as studies by scientists whose agree the global climate is gradually warming.
Instead they believe headlines and sensational news reports that attribute nearly every tornado or hurricane to be caused by the villains responsible for "climate change."
If there is any need for silly protests, the paucity of their cause will soon enough be exposed. I learned long ago that good intentions are no excuse for stupid actions.
As usual, Matt, thanks for providing coverage of this recent escalation by the doom within (pick a time frame) crowd.
“ in which case he'll likely be bitten by my German Shepard, and I'll become a hero for all the press”
In reality, you would be arrested, and your dog would have been held for an undetermined amount of time to be tested, or the dog would have been shot on the spot.
I know of no “heros” who are willing to have their dog killed for the owner’s beliefs.
Took the words out of my mouth. His dog would have been euthanized if not shot. I suspect this story if it happened has been embellished. Risking the life of your dog for some political stunt is no act of bravery.
Admittedly, Jan, I was a pig headed young man. My older self gets the shakes when I recall my younger follies.
The reality of that conflict was that I was far away from the rowdy crowd, and had a reporter's notebook and pencil in my hand. Most members of Boston's finest did not want to waste time after their shift filling out paper work. And the mounted officer calmed down about the same time as I came to my senses.
He admitted he had not carefully listened when I told him what I was doing.
I think you have created the figure of the social media addled humorless activist bent on destroying everything…a figure who refuses to see the value in anything beyond its instrumentality. I just don’t think this figure exists. It reminds me of the internet folks that rail against “cultural marxists.” Who are they talking about? What are they talking about?
You’ve painted these two activists as the progenitors of a terrorist group in a dystopian novel.
Get a hold of yourself. These activists are not the people on this planet that make life so miserable. You know exactly who those people are - you’ve written about many of them.
All I’m saying is that the reaction to these two activists is pretty extreme and misplaced.
The idea that there is some social movement interested in destroying so called western values, that this is corrupting the youth, etc is suspect.
I believe that this intense response to these two activists is actually about something else…I don’t know what exactly but the response is way out of proportion.
Matt, most of the world’s paintings are in vaults, unseen and protected as investments. Sure, these works aren’t destroyed but no one gets to see them either.
If your gripe is that these “dopes” spit on the value of art for civilization, etc, then what about these wealthy art collectors that hide it all away?
As for the comment that maybe if an oil executive saw the sunflowers painting he might be moved to stop spoiling the earth?
You have to be joking. An oil executive who inherited both an oil company and a private equity fund sits as the chair of the board for the National Gallery of Australia.
I imagine you will find many board members of many museums owning oil companies and totally unmoved by any of the art and beauty they control.
That being said, destroying art is dumb.
What’s more effective is sabotaging pipeline construction like they did in North Dakota.
Sorry to say but the fetish for “conversation” has got us nowhere on this issue.
That's because a conversation implies two sides. Radical environmentalists want to harangue us and then impose their vision. Not having convinced anyone to go along with it.
Harangued by environmentalists. Maybe it’s the company you keep.
I love the “two sides” comment. What are the two sides anyway?
Perhaps one side is unaccountable transnational mega corporations that only want money and they will destroy and kill whoever to get it. Perhaps the other side then is the whiny brats who KEEP RUINING EVERYTHING.
Or maybe…One side wants to drive around, build stuff, move to Mars, eat cheeseburgers and the other side wants everyone to be sad!
One side is down to fuck, the other side wants to have a conversation about consent.
There was nothing avant garde (new or unusual) about their actions. It is the same tired whining from the same pampered brats who decry civilization at every turn. Avant garde would have been advocating for a massive push to build nuclear power plants to replace fossil fuels for electricity generation. "Renewables" are too expensive and too intermittent to ever be baseload power.
Try asking the genius protestors what the solutions are and you often found they never got that far into the subject. These are rich bored despicable dilettantes who have never worked a day in their lives. One day they will wake up and realize they are the bad guys in this cowboy movie
You're right, which makes the buzzword "woke" a semantic misnomer and another linguistic fraud perpetrated by Big Media and the Media/Marxist Industrial complex.
Since they will never, as you observed, wake up - by definition they can never be woke (or at least what the word woke should mean).
Thank you PeteRR for injecting some science to the discussion. The protestors, which looked like a bunch of smug 60’s retreads and wannabes, lacked any such practical insights and probably couldn’t bluff their way through a basic climate science exam. Since China is by far the greatest emitter of CO2, why aren’t they protesting in front of the Chinese embassy?
It has to be said that if China wasn't supplying so much of the consumer goods market in this country, and worldwide- about 1/4 of everything is made in China now- they wouldn't be nearly the carbon emitter they are presently. The PRC is also of course in the forefront of R&D of advanced nuclear plant designs, as well as solar panel production. The Biden administration has taken steps to fund domestic efforts to research Gen III and Iv nuclear plants and to ramp up solar panel production, because it is not a good idea to allow China to achieve a monopoly over such crucially needed technologies.
I think climate activists need to outgrow their tactical ineptitude. But I'll take them over climate heating deniers, who are basically running interference for the pollutocrats of lobbying organizations like the API, using the tactics of Roger Stone ("there's no need for logical consistency, as long as it makes the opposition look bad.")
Betcha they both had pricey iPhones made by asian slaves, with materials mined from the third world.
If these dipshits want to go back to the 19th century (but without horses or burning wood), let em find out how that plays out. But the wiser among us already know what that end game looks like, and therefore won't go along with it. The goal of this shit is to depopulate the planet, which these useless idiots won't figure out until they're next on the kill-conveyor.
It is now cheaper to build renewables than to run current power plants. Intermittency will be regulated through grid-level battery systems. If your information is over 6 months old, it's wrong. That's how fast this industry is moving.
You have no idea what the heck you are talking about. Did you also materialize a billion child slaves in Africa to make the minerals for this endeavor magically appear?
"Tesla’s world’s largest battery is moving ahead with expansion: Tesla is switching to lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery cells for its utility-scale Megapack energy storage product"
There are no grid-level battery systems and due to raw material constraints, there won't be for a long time.
On top of which no battery system can overcome a regional lack of wind. Summer of 2021 all of Western Europe experienced a weeks long lull, putting those countries into an energy deficit that we still haven't emerged from.
Civilization requires on-call energy generation. Not just whatever Mother Nature is willing to provide. In 2021 the UK received just 18% of the nameplate power from all of it's wind and solar generation. 358 gigawatts of potential power and 50.5 gigs of actual power.
If there was a way to embed an image, I would provide it.
A system of batteries to power an entire regional grid for weeks.
Last summer if France hadn't had dispatchable energy from their nuke plant fleet, it would have been catastrophe in the UK, Spain, etc. What did happen was horrible enough.
That's less than 10% of the homes in just that area, for optimistically 10 hours. What will it cost? Who's paying for it? Will it drive up electricity prices?
Only if you factor in the government putting their heavy thumb on the scales of energy production. 'Renewable' energy is allowed to game the system, being paid for all power produced, even when not needed, and generating renewable credits at the same time. The dirty secret which has become more well known recently is that 'renewable' energy cannot provide the needed base load for modern society.
The EUs 'renewable energy' facade was shown to rely entirely on Russian gas.
"Building New Renewables Is Cheaper Than Burning Fossil Fuels:
It’s now cheaper to build and operate new large-scale wind or solar plants in nearly half the world than it would be to run an existing coal or gas-fired power plant."
I was not going to pay Bloomberg, but just from the 1 paragraph I could see:
- It said it was cheaper to build and operate solar or wind (in 50% of the world) then run gas plants. Building a plant does not generate energy, nor a base load of energy. These solar and wind farms are built on an optimistic estimate of power produced, and seldom produce the estimated energy.
- Building and operating costs are greatly influenced by government regulations and red tape, and many governments have been very easy and permissive for renewable energy installations, while saddling gas, coal and oil plants with carbon penalties. The red tape to build a new gas plant, I would guess, is suffocating in most 'climate crisis' crazy countries.
- I suspect the article just glosses over the problems with base load, waving their hand at battery storage as if that was a viable and imminent solution.
Does that include the cost for the acres and acres needed for solar farms, and the farmers they put out of business? To say nothing of the food they produced.
And a solar farm could be totally wiped out with one drone strike.
It is getting cheaper because Biden is purposely making fossil fuels outrageously expensive and rare.
Not because they ascend on their own merit.
We are years, maybe decades away from renewables replacing fossil fuels, and even then, there are millions of products we use daily that will require the use of these fossil fuels that climate nut cases want to eliminate all together,
MBS, in charge of Saudi Arabia, just voted OPEC+ reduce daily petroleum production by 2 million barrels/per day in an effort to boost prices. Biden publicly rebuked him, but since we're addicted to oil, there was little he could do except maybe limit arms sales to Saudi Arabia. Biden asked for more oil production, because lowering commodity prices is good for politics and Biden is a politician.
Wind/solar are cheaper tautologically, because they are renewable. They also offer free delivery - coal/oil must be mined, refined, shipped on trains, stuck into a furnace, and burned. A lot of people in that supply chain. Once solar panels are built, you only need one guy with a hard hat and a clipboard to check if the sun rises that morning. So if by merit you mean cheaper, we don't need wars in the Middle East to support them, we don't need to prop up shady dictators, or they're cleaner with less health issues as a result, then renewables win - its tautological? Is there no merit to these things?
You are correct on both counts: we are decades away from renewables taking over and yes, I want plastics, micro-plastics, and other petroleum byproducts to go away.
There's a whole helluva lot more involved than just installing solar panels and walking away. The distribution network needs to be upsized to handle increased electrical demand. A lot of mined copper involved there. And by your own definition, solar and wind aren't renewable. Solar panel production degrades steadily over a 20 year lifespan (on average) before they must be removed and replaced. The panels are too expensive and complicated to recycle, so they end up in landfills. That's just distribution. I could write a book about why electrification is a terrible idea on the user side, especially for heating.
Source: I'm a mechanical professional engineer and a certified energy manager. I.e. I've done the math.
Nobody faked anybody out. They are using 70 year old tactics and in effect are mocking those tactics. Because they are in no danger from the authorities. They act as if they are facing Bull Connor's police dogs or the firehose's of Selma.
“They pranked you. You got played.” Do you listen to yourself? You sound like an immature middle school kid. Are you sticking your tongue out with your thumbs in your ears while you type it? My 11 and 8 yo children are more mature.
Throwing stuff at priceless artwork is not “new,” it’s not creative, and it didn’t help their doomsday cult cause because if these people actually cared they’d dedicate their lives to helping invent actual solutions. There is nothing impressive about people “dedicating” their lives to acting like bratty children with supporters who sound like the middle schoolers sitting at the dumb kids table at the local public school.
Keep it up. If you look around, you'll notice that a lot of people are already discussing supposed _solutions_ to the _problem_ . That by throwing soup at a revered painting. They won't get shot or even beaten. Pretty cheap activism, I'd say. "Rage away...."
You do not do pranks with paintings by one of the best and most important painters who ever lived. They had no idea if any soup would get in or that no damage would be done. As someone mentioned, they also didn't care. This wasn't avant garde or theatrical activism, it was desecration and criminal. And I have read so many conversations about this and still haven't seen any discussion of their cause other than the consensus that they damaged that cause. No one has changed their stance because of this on climate change, but some people sympathetic to the cause are distancing themselves from this idiotic act.
"You do not do pranks with paintings by one of the best and most important painters who ever lived."
Well, that's exactly what they did.
There's no such thing as being "sympathetic to" a cause like wanting to prevent the annihilation of human civilization. Either you think we're on a trajectory to make the planet largely uninhabitable, or you don't, or you're agnostic. Lots of people who think the scientific consensus is likely correct are somewhat more radicalized as a result of the stunt.
Where do you live? A high school debate round? Humanity will certainly face challenges from climate change but I'm sorry "annihilation of human civilization" is not in the cards.
The living space where a few billion people inhabit will be underwater in a hundred years. It’s not the end of the world, but it’s not nothing either. And that is only the most obvious thing that will happen.
Yes, human civilization will be annihilated and the planet completely uninhabitable if/maybe/when the ocean rises a few centimeters, which obviously can be prevented if we all go back to living tin the 17th century.
Cool. I've been waiting for the return of the chamber pot & streets filled with excrement. We can view it as a contemporary hair shirt that we all have to wear so we can be absolved of our climate sins.
No, it's more like the oceans will continue to acidify and the food chain of the sea will unravel, while extreme weather disasters cascade on top of each other- even in the exalted Developed World- unless we give up our habit of requiring extra cherries on top of our hot fudge sundaes.
Hopefully that's enough of an exaggeration to counterbalance your hyperbole.
To return to my preference for understatement: the smug gloating of global climate heating scoffers rings more hollowly with every season that passes, with its accumulation of real-world evidence. Not really my problem, but the eventual negative effects on their probity and credibility- about any issue at all- are liable to be dramatic, and long-lasting.
The scientific consensus is paid-for and enforced by fascist big tech companies. The IPCC AR6 RCP 8.5 is the most disastrous prediction and, according to the IPCC, the most improbable scenario, and the scenario that we the people are expected to believe in, because, we are told, it is 'the consensus', and if we don't nod our heads, we are cancelled.
If the planet is on a trajectory to become largely uninhabitable, it is because there is no human force that can withstand your invincible ignorance.
The messiah complex works overtime in the minds of "climate" activists..
The sheer hubris of imagining what is or is not good for "the planet" drives the delusion of believing we can "save the human race from imminent extinction" by destroying worldwide economies, impoverishing millions, and derailing decades of progress in lifting people out of starvation-level poverty using evil fossil fuels.
If you really believe that we must "save the planet" (read "save my carcass") you all need to find another way to go about it, at least a way different from what the Claus Schwabs of the world have planned for their messianic drive to save our souls . . . uh . . . I mean the planet.
The shit exploding from your brain is now gushing out your mouth. This was the same property – is – unimportant bullshit we had to sit through through BLM. Be aware our tolerance is thin, and retribution is coming.
Athena, you credit the activists with having ensured their stunt would not harm the work they attacked in their “avant- garde act” of theatrical activism. Yet the accounts I have read of the related stunts suggest they not only haven’t done so, nor would they care.
this wasn’t Avant Garde. they were attacking the painting because they see it’s value in dollars and cents. they know it’s priceless, they just don’t understand why...
"kind of an avant garde act of theatrical activism" Yes, we get that (yawn.)
Despite what the contemporary high-$$$ art Market might indicate to the contrary, there's more to Art than Transgression. Dada and Fluxus were avant-garde art movements. But while they were always assertive- sometimes boldly so- their performance stunts never involved outright crapping on the work of other artists. That sort of stunt isn't avant-garde; it's stale, unimaginative, nihilistic. And also ugly. It's bad optics. It's also politically incoherent: having as yet seen only the story headlines accompanying photos of the act, I still have no idea what sort of message the "activists" intended to send.
A skeptical critic might venture that the intent was to sabotage their own movement. Yes, that's really how inept it looks. A movement of would-be neo-Situationists might at least consider that if they're all about leveraging symbolism and subverting images, a Van Gogh painting was a spectacularly idiotic choice for their attack.
Again, that's not exactly specific, and you offer zero specific solutions. Pick something to help fix and go fix it. Complaining about externalities accomplishes nothing.
A key to successful civil disobedience movements is the ability to clearly articulate specific and realistic goals and allow those goals to be subject to debate. Protesting to stop climate change is like protesting for happiness - it's an aspiration not a policy that can be implemented.
I'm somebody who used to be a solid believer that man was the cause of climate change. Obviously there is a lot of climate change happening, but now I'm more of the opinion that there are natural cycles and we are doing everything we can to make it worse.
I don't like fanaticism but ...
As someone who believes that we are destroying ourselves ecologically in a whole variety of ways, oceans fished out, loss of soil nutrition, deforestation, beautiful mountains destroyed by strip mining...
the list goes on and on.
As someone who in my own small way has been trying to get this message out to people for 40 years, it is very very clear that nobody listens unless it's really shoved right in their face. We would still be in Vietnam and black people would still be banned from lunch counters without the widespread protests and activism that made it change.
Protests like this may cause people to get angry, but it seems like that's the only thing that will get people's attention because rising cancer and autism rates and all kinds of other health problems don't seem to be getting their attention, not to mention all the problems associated with GMOs and EMFs. And let's not forget the mass extinctions going on at this moment.
Many human beings are basically very short-sighted, built to respond to the tiger in the jungle but not long term threats.
Really what we need is respect for nature and an understanding that we are part of the web of life. Even if we are the crown of creation of some people believe, we still need to treat the rest of creation in a wise and compassionate way, which we are not doing.
So, as distasteful as it is for me to see protests like this desecrating great art, I have to confess to having some sympathy for it because just continuing business as usual is just continuing down the road to destruction.
I disagree. People ignore the climate alarmists, even in our faces, on the basic grounds that absolutely nothing the climate alarmists propose will address any of those ecological concerns. Climate alarmists are some of the most ecologically destructive people in the west. We might be having a different discussion if these morons weren't ecologically destructive anti-human, anti-environment zealots, but they are, and they are drowning out important conversations about decreasing biodiversity and crap ton of environmentally destructive pollution.
The degradation of soil in global farmlands is a problem - solutions are found in everything from crop rotation to crushing up rocks and sprinkling to 100s of other solutions. The climate activists are shutting down the most advanced farms with the best soil management on Earth (see Denmark and New Zealand).
On the one hand I agree with you. A lot of climate activists are morons.
And.. in the larger sense, how do we realize that we are utterly dependent on our environment and that we can't just keep doing whatever we want and survive. We act like resources are infinite and the ability of the earth to transmute any poisons we put into it are infinite. That is functionally insane.
What would you think of somebody who on the one hand was pissing through a vast inheritance as fast as they could and on the other hand was systematically shitting in all parts of their house?
I met some economy professors, said to them that any economic system not based in physical reality is doomed to destruction. They had no answer.
Business as usual is slow suicide for all of us and maybe not as slow as we would wish.
They had no response because you were whining. Complaining about a problem without offering a solution is called whining.
I disagree with your assessment, moreover, you have yet to articulate any clear and realistic solutions, so I am not sure how any good comes from the complaining.
I am all for ecological conservation. I find hunting organizations and coastal habitat restoration groups have actual solutions to actual problems and the work they do actually improves the environment in the areas they focus. 4Ocean is a fun profitable twist on ocean clean up, the bracelets are neat and who doesn't like a good Yeti?
Laying down in the street or being a doomsayer doesn't accomplish anything. Climate activists yelling at me about my (brand new very efficient) SUV or blocking my route to get my kids from school, is not going to elicit any sympathy from anyone because there isn't a point to their complaining. There isn't a goal. It's just being a jerk to be a jerk.
Complaints about their activities is exactly what the activists are working for. I suppose violence would be even better. At this stage, it doesn't matter what the content of the cause is. The idea is to make trouble which will then break up an apparent consensus. Take, for example, the Civil Rights movement. In the 1940s and '50s, practically all White people agreed with racist segregation, in practice if not in theory. I was there, and as a teenager I do not recall meeting more than a very few people -- 3 or 4 out of hundreds -- who were not overt, believing racists. Only a very small minority, even among non-Whites, were passionate enough and brave enough to do anything about it. The majority of White people (and many, many Black people) were very annoyed or even outraged about the activism. That proved to be useful because their annoyance and outrage _amplified_ the problem to the point where influential people like capitalists and bureaucrats began to ask, "Is there something we can do about this? Besides kill them all?" Now they name major highways after Martin Luther King and everyone gets pious and depressed when his name is mentioned. Official state-sanctioned racism is no more, and is against the law. Incredible, if you'd looked around in 1950.
Climate politics? Climate politics as it stood a few years ago had been neutralized. Even big corporations were getting in on it -- in the sense of using it for propaganda and sales. The only thing that really changed was the level of carbon in the atmosphere, which went up. So now you have some people who figured that out and are making trouble about it. As usual, they can't be heard in normal public discourse.
I don't know whether climate activism is scientifically right or wrong, but it is certain that unless something much more pressing comes along, your annoyance and anger will someday float to the top, and the capitalists and bureaucrats will be asking, "Is there something we can do about this? Besides kill them all?" So keep it up, I guess. Whatever it is, it's working, and, who knows, maybe something will be done.
This sort of action only informs me that the people involved are misinformed morons that have not bothered to study the issue that claim to support. This sort of thing might be used to bring attention to real injustice such as the Civil Rights movement of the early 60’s, but in this case all they’re doing is alienating the very people they need to support their cause.
Matt has his left wing cred to maintain so I understand why he hedges, but an honest person would point out a few things:
1. These idiots blocking roads and trying to destroy art are not just idealistic teenagers, they are also aging retired radical hypocrites who are indirectly funded and bailed out of jail by rich patrons who often got their wealth by exploiting the fucking natural resources that these radicals now claim they are trying to preserve
2. How do these protestors get to the protests? They don’t walk or ride bikes - they fucking drive! Sometimes in vans that pick them up from meeting places that they carpool to in cars. If only we had the time to block those cars - the hypocrisy of these groups is off the charts.
3. So let me get this straight…they have no interest in protesting US involvement in a war in Ukraine that could obliterate the entire earth if it continues to escalate…but sitting in the road to keep a mom in labor from getting safely to the hospital…no problem. They pick the issues to protest that their patrons tell them to protest…it’s despicable hypocrisy
4. They decide to protest in the only country that has actually reduced carbon emissions but China and India the leading polluters in the world zero protests. Why? Because the cowards know they are safe in US jails. If they travelled to China to protest they would never be seen again. Despicable radical hypocrites who are cowardly and self serving.
If they had any self respect they would all beg for forgiveness from everyone they inconvenienced or put at risk.
We're on the verge of WWIII and they're throwing soup at paintings. Oh well, I guess the climate "emergency" is a nice diversion for the kids and their followers.
If some fascist asshats like those handling our puppet president Dementia Joe try to instigate anything like a "climate lockdown" the resistance will be so swift and violent that those daring to impose it will regret it.
"Climate change" is inchoate; it's like threatening someone with eternal damnation for not recycling or something. It has less weight than a disease that is supposed to be an immediate deadly threat. "Suffer now and indefinitely to 'save the planet'" won't fly.
I suspect they used tomato soup as a reference to Warhol and the sunflowers painting as a nod to Ukraine-sunflowers thing. They flat-out said they were protesting people freezing this winter from the energy crisis.
Both the nuclear apocalypse and the climate armageddon are important issues.
Nice semantics gymnastics. They threw soup at a priceless painting because they are spoiled children promoting polices of mass starvation and death. The climate alarmists are a doomsday cult that especially appeal to the not very bright but bored young adults.
They don’t get sympathy for their “cause” because they can’t articulate anything except demands that billions of other people’s lives get destroyed.
If they actually cared about the climate they’d dedicate their lives to solutions - inventing ways to improve agriculture, capture emissions, and produce energy. Anything to actually improve the world.
Doomsday cults don’t improve anything and sooner or later they wear themselves out.
They are throwing soup at a painting because it worked. Calling them bad names is putting icing on the cake. As for devoting their lives to solutions -- there is no way that an ordinary person can do that. The economic and political system they live in won't support it -- indeed, won't tolerate it. It can't because it's based on the accumulation of power and profit and anything that gets in the way will be wiped out.
Millions of people literally work every day in industries to make things better. Biosystems engineering, environmentalists, naturalists, habitat restoration companies, every engineer working towards products that are more efficient, and countless others. Maybe a public-school graduate in a democrat run city because math and science are prerequisites and they aren't taught there anymore, but in life it's never too late to stop complaining and get an education and do something positive rather than just whine endlessly and wait for a magical fairy to come solve human problems.
Going by the model of the Civil Rights movement: the actions of the activists annoy and anger people. Being angry is tiring. Eventually, if enough of the activists survive, they tire out their opponents, and possibly get something they want. Certainly being annoying is the first step.
If you think people are working to improve the conditions of life, you don't understand capitalism. The point of capitalism is to acquire power and money. The "conditions of life" are mostly resources you use up to do this.
I'm sure you've heard all this before so I won't persist.
The civil rights movement had specific and well-articulated achievable goals that most were happy to support - in no small part because those articulated goals didn't involve materially destroying countless lives and starving at least hundreds of millions of people to death as a predictable outcome. Same with truckers and suffrage and countless other movements. The climate activists only goals are lots of suffering and poverty in a hapless and ill-conceived attempt to undue the industrial revolution. If climate activists are so opposed to human consumption at all levels, and unable intellectually to contribute to actual solutions, they can first exact on themselves that which they seek for poor people around the globe.
Capitalism has lifted more people from poverty than any other economic system in the history of mankind ever. Claiming otherwise is pure propaganda. Prosperity leads to greater efficiency and more willingness to take care of the environment. Poverty drives emissions and pollution.
I have heard others try to claim what you have before, but it doesn't make it factually and objectively true. Objectively capitalism improves lives. There is inequality in every system, but the masses live best under free market capitalism and worst under central economic planning (aka socialism). As our free markets get destroyed by over regulation and government waste our opportunities for advancement and improvement go down.
I used to be pretty invested in the climate movement and certainly am concerned about the consequences posed by the issue, however I feel that they are going to be crushed in the next five years as they are pushing countries to choose between green/poor and carbon fueled/prospering.
Their moral posturing, with obvious elitist hypocrisy (a feature ubiquitous among all leftist pursuits it seems), will find little sympathy as times get hard.
Their inability to understand the difference between baseline power production and sporadic power production offered by renewables means they were too slow to recognize the need for nuclear power. It’s such a shame, because as they get more desperate to bring attention to this issue they will only turn off more people in their ever more extreme demonstrations.
It’s not simply that they’re advocating we sacrifice growth. They advocate that we sacrifice living human beings. All over the world there is a jihad going on against nitrogen fertilizer runoff. This is happening even in places like the Netherlands where runoff is more under control that it is almost anywhere else in the world. The reason is, without chemical nitrogen fertilizer. The planet cannot support more than 1/2 to 1/3 of its current population. Global leaders openly advocate genocide.
The nitrogen necessary for growing plants is supposed to come from animal bodies, but instead these same groups push for lab meat and treating the earth like a sandbox where they can just reroute water with no consequence and bulldozing forests for crops. They talk about forest fires but won't support managed burns. They want the power for their electric cars but don't want fossil fuels and won't go nuclear. The precious mineral mining is totes cool though!
No serious person advocates that we pull a Sri Lanka and just suddenly stop using chemical fertilizer. But look, the fact is that one day we won’t be able to make NPK from oil and then what? We currently allow a great deal of soil fertility to wash out to sea or sit uselessly in a landfill because we’d rather make it from oil.
Thanks for prompting me to look more deeply into that. I think my point stands: The Dutch government mandated a 50% reduction in nitrogen emissions over a 10 year period. The Rajapaksa government decided to ban the import of chemical fertilizers over the course of a year. Even the most unwashed pinko commie environmental activist won’t defend that stupidity.
Heck, just a 50% reduction. So, heck, just a 50% reduction in crop yield. All we need is 4 billion folks to die off and we can reduce fertilizer use 50%.
You think that a 50% reduction in nitrogen fertilizers means a 50% reduction in crop yield? Show your work. Citation needed here because it seems pretty unbelievable to me.
expect in Denmark and soon to be Canada they are cutting back. The United States has a senate which empowers agriculture areas which can prevent these police here, for now at least.
No, global leaders quietly discuss collapse and the attendant die-off that will inevitably result. Without forgetting where I am---no need to traffic in conspiracies.
This is why they can never be honest about their position, which is to increase the cost of energy by many multiples, shortening lifespans across the globe and throwing billions into poverty and hunger.
Also this is a feature, not a bug, just one they realize is not popular (poverty, hunger, death).
If that’s the case then why can’t we store intermittent power at scale??? Where, specifically, will the minerals like lithium come from? How much gets mined currently and how much would it take to store wind power for an long windless winter????
I’m not sure how to take this comment. It offers little but arrogance.
I’m certainly aware of power storage options but also not aware of any solution capable of making up for baseline power. Hence why Germany, even after massive investment in renewable power sources, is having to rely on coal again with ng being in shorter supply.
This also side steps the cost. Before the Ukraine war the cost of electricity in germany was much more than nuclear France (double at least I believe). If we are adding storage to that then it would only drive the costs higher.
And finally there is the last issue of how clean “clean” energy sources when you consider their full impact throughout their lifespan. That’s more of a tangent however.
Nuclear is no doubt an important piece of a decarbonized future.
Full lifespan carbon impact of solar is zero if the panels are produced by solar power, which they will be quite soon.
There are dozens of solutions being funded by VC capital right now to investigate the storage problem. Nickle-hydrogen, iron-oxygen and other battery storage have the potential to solve the lithium problem. Pumping water at scale is already used worldwide. Just lifting large blocks and using kinetic energy shows promise. People are researching compressed air.
We have had two decades of almost unbelievable drops in the cost and increases in efficiency and production of solar. You are assuming that the era of innovation in solar and storage is over. Why would you believe that, especially since private industry is getting involved big time? It’s not government research dollars anymore, it’s making real money and the VCs are getting on the bandwagon.
I'm not against these technologies. I even have solar and battery technology at my house. But it's not scalable, it's a luxury, and certainly won't be scalable in the next five years (doesn't help that we will likely need China as almost all solar panels and batteries are produced there and we are quickly escalating a trade war with them).
While I admit that I haven't followed developments as closely lately, I used to watch the battery and storage space like a hawk. Eventually I got tired of of seeing a steady amount of headlines promising a new breakthrough and nothing actually coming from it. The reality is storage is incredibly hard. Once you get to a higher density you quickly find that it can only tolerate a couple of discharges. Once you solve the discharge issue you find that it no longer has the density, or it's unstable under impact. Even if you have somehow solved for both of those conditions the biggest hurdle of all presents itself in being able to scale up and mass produce (nobody considers this but it's the hardest part of any hardware effort, more so in storage technology). So much of the hype announcements are done to boost investor interest and appeal or for some professor justifying their generous NIH funding. You quickly learn that any lab breakthrough is just that, a lab breakthrough, that has little relevance to producing an actual working product that could be used in the real world. Also, kinetic energy, as fun as it is to see enterprising YouTubers play with it, is way too inefficient outside of a couple of special cases.
As touched on above so much of our solar growth has come from China essentially subsidizing it. If it's produced in China then you can be sure it's produced using coal too. There is also concerns about labor camps being used in their production.
I'm not against this technology in principle but to decarbonize on scale we only have one solution: nuclear. This is especially true if you support the transition to electric vehicles which will require far more power generation than our current Grid can supply and handle.
Most of us only know a unipolar world and we are quite likely about to enter a bipolar world. I think we are going to realize how much prosperity in the US was derived by being on top of that world order. The cost of energy is one of the most crucial factors in predicting prosperity and given the changing global conditions we own it to the next generation to keep costs as low as possible (and obviously I would also like to see us produce less carbon in our production of that energy, hence the need for nuclear).
"Full lifespan carbon impact of solar is zero if the panels are produced by solar power, which they will be quite soon"
ARE YOU KIDDING ME.
Also compressing air requires the same energy at minimum to compress that it releases. This is insanity. This is high school physics, conservation of energy. JFC, are you just a troll?
At no point have I advocated for coal as that is limited, hard to get, has a lot of toxic byproduct an requires extreme landscape destruction to get. Much like the minerals used in all solar technology.
I didn't know you needed to contribute sources for the base laws of thermodynamics. May I suggest your local high school library?
"In 2021, the U.S. had 43 operating pumped hydro plants with a total generating capacity of about 22 gigawatts and an energy storage capacity of 553 gigawatt-hours. They make up 93% of utility-scale storage in the country. Globally, pumped hydro’s share of energy storage is even higher – about 99% of energy storage volume."
They often have the support of the media and that has allowed them to get a way with a lot (this could would said of many leftist causes).
Next year we will have a recession, it could be the worst recession of our lifetime when you consider all the things that are going on (high inflation + high energy costs + high interest rates + massive government debt + war + supply chain issues). This stuff will be tolerated less and less. If people get hungry all bets are off.
Agreed on the hungry people. With 80% of people in urban areas, and like a third of the country as renters who pay nearly half the income to that single bill, it'll be a shit show with a fucked up food supply chain. Lol I was born in the 80s to a working class family and turned 18 around the dot com bubble and 9/11 the next year. My family members and I have worked for ~10+ large companies that closed after decades from the various bubbles and crashes smashing into the economy, including multinational financial firms (not as the bankers) collapsing under scandal. More than one had a company move to a southern state for profit reasons which is not just a thing most people do unless they're young with no families yet. Up until the year before covid I skated back and forth across the poverty line. I can't even imagine thinking life is a stable thing. The only stable employment for people in my SEC, in my lifetime, has been war.
Your experience is such a common one. I am around the same age but my siblings and I have managed to find some success but come from very poor roots with a lot of famine mentality (my Mom grew up in a large family, living on the farm but owning no land, in a three room house with no indoor plumbing). It's for this reason I've always tried to vote in the interests of the working class, but only seen it get worse in my lifetime. Sadly I am convinced that any real change to the benefit of the working class will only be possible through hard times (hard times like people going hungry on a scale we haven't seen in some time). Lets hope I'm full of it.
I honestly can't even imagine owning property let alone anything with useful land. I'm also pessimistic about what it takes to convince people to do things and also hope I'm wrong.
I'm sorry to hear that. Property ownership should be one of the foundational goals of our country. Not saying it's for everyone but I believe it's a pretty crucial way to get people to have buy-in to the longterm stability of the country (but let's be honest, few people actually own their own house or property, the bank does).
I'm pretty pessimistic too. We live in a time that echoes the "Brave New World", in which people are being conditioned to be "happy" as they lose power and liberty to an unelected oligarchy (I think in the end Huxley was more prescient than Orwell, but if I'm honest it's been a long time since I read either). This is why I think it will take actual hunger to get people to fight for real change, because social conditioning doesn't work as well when your most basic of needs aren't being met. Even then there is no guarantee of success or that the outcome will be better.
Hilariously, thanks to stupid internet things and dumb international laws, I can buy a square foot in Scotland and become landed gentry easier than I can buy a livable property in the US as a US citizen!
Edit: don't forget if you don't pay property tax on your property, even if you own it outright, it will be taken away. You never ever own property in the US.
Less intrusive tactics aren't getting the job done as, after at least the 35 years that I have been hearing about it, far too many people do not give a crap about climate change. And, to add insult to injury, enough of us remember The Coming Ice Age that was just before this. And a few people will remember enough other climate scares to roll their eyes at all of this.
The bottom line is really that not all of us are Mathusians. Which is what this comes down to.
My first recollection of the coming demise of the planet was predicted for the mid to late 1970s. Every time the deadline comes up, it gets moved up 5-years. When I thought that they should really be going with a longer lead time, like 20 years, I realized that the number had to be short enough for people to consider themselves almost immediately affected, otherwise it would be more difficult to rouse hysteria. First it was a population issue, as you note, then it switched to the Global Ice Age, then global warming, now climate change so it covers anything.
It goes back to Malthus. Further back than that but I can't write a book here. The enemies of humanity, those who want a dull, incurious herd of workers easy to cull when needed, required a philosophy. An explanation of why humans are a pestilence upon nature. As if we didn't arise and evolve amongst nature; as if we are aliens doing alien shit to the planet. These Mathusians are masters of FUD. Very little that they expouse as dire truth has any basis in fact. As you note, the story keeps changing. We have become so dumbed down with our 10 minute attention spans that most don't notice it.
“Normal channels are not working,” says one activist.
Translation: the process of democratic discourse has not led to me getting the result I'd like. So we've decided to inflict our obsessions on strangers and seriously inconvenience people by throwing a public tantrum to get our way.
I don't know about anyone else, but when I'm confronted with emotional blackmail—do what I say and think as I do or the world will end!—I'm more inclined to disagree just on principle.
These people need to put down the MSM crackpipe—the planet aint dyin, the planet has lived thru ice ages and volcano ages, and humans are an incredibly adaptable species. Also, there's what like 8 billion of us? Time for a pruning anyway!
Instead of saving the world save yourself (and your fam & friends), instead of healing the planet heal yourself.
The planet will still be here long after we're all forgotten.
Dahmer wasn't murdering out of malice. He was lonely and liked cuddling with the corpses. There isn't one word to describe his flavor of awful and crazy.
I wonder Matt if you would be as relaxed about these tactics if they were utilized by pro gun rights people or those who believed the 2020 election was stolen. Does the perceived sympathy of the cause determine whether the action is justified or not? This is nonsense. These tactics are wrong regardless of who perpetrates it or what cause they are trying to raise "awareness" for. This is a layup. How is this so hard for you to understand?
There is a big difference - the truckers earned sympathy and support. That’s key to successful civil disobedience. Their well articulated demands were reasonable and imposed nothing on others, they were well informed, and they protested in a way explicitly permitted by the Canadian Charter rights. They also informed the public, on house arrest at the time, where they would be protesting.
The doomsday climate alarmists are not gaining public support. They can’t articulate solutions. Their demands involve the material destruction of billions of lives while not solving the supposed problem they are protesting for. They contribute nothing. They solve nothing. They can’t even live by the rules they demand from others.
With climate concerns, if these “activists” actually cared about the planet they could help invent solutions, dedicate their lives to habitat restoration or organic farming or emissions reductions or clean energy. Lots of people already do and they actually improve the world without stopping traffic or destroying artwork or wasting milk. The climate alarmists comes across as they are - too lazy and uneducated to actually help solve the problem........ it’s like a car jacker who swears he’s fighting inequality........... he can say that endlessly, maybe even believe it, but in the end, he’s still just a criminal stealing others people’s stuff.
I also sympathize with the truckers and believer they were treated appallingly by the Canadian government but I think equating the two is off base. The trucker protest was fundamentally about individual rights whereas the climate crisis, by its vary nature is collective. When more frequent droughts and stronger hurricanes destroy crops and industry it impacts society as a whole. The analogy of a carjacker is not accurate, it’s more like someone grabbing the wheel of a bus away from the driver because he believes, right or wrong, that the driver is going off a cliff. I don’t like these particular protestors or their tactics but I recognize that we need to take this shit seriously as a society. I’ve switched to supporting nuclear as I have learned more about renewables.
Taking the shit seriously neither implies nor compels "protests." In this case actual solutions, many of which already exist but are adamantly opposed by the "climate alarmists," would be far more productive. People who genuinely take the issue seriously learn about it, and those truly dedicated are in industries and careers pursuing and finding actual solutions.
I have lived in the woods over a year of my life and dedicated half my undergrad to environmental sciences. I was also an outdoor adventure guide for 3 summers in undergrad. To this day I don't just talk the talk but also walk the walk with my money and my choices on environmental concerns. Nothing irritates me more than climate alarmists and their pointless, cruel, idiotic, and immature antics. There is no more ecologically destructive force in the western world than "climate activists" who seem perfectly content to destroy the Earth not saving the climate. They are also far too lazy to be taken seriously - if they actually cared they's dedicate their lives to creating solutions not demanding "other people" starve to death. The climate alarmists are so stupid they don't even realize nothing is worse for the environment and emissions than poverty and scarcity.
The frustrating thing is that those who have real solutions receive no attention in the media. Reducing car dependency in the US would go a long way towards reducing emissions. A nationwide plan to make cities more walkable and build more public transportation should be adopted immediately. But that’s unsexy and it will take more than 4 years so no politician wants to touch it. Besides, GM might sell one less tire and we can’t have that.
No, it wouldn't. Additionally, Pro-scarcity ideology is not actually a solution.
Cities aren't building more public transportation because the same people pushing public transportation are pushing for defunding the police and other pro-criminal pro-crime policies in the name of "social justice." The cities aren't walkable for many reasons and again, crime is a huge one.
Solutions that work in reality are actual solutions. "Solutions" that are unworkable in reality are empty nonsense.
Just another reason to invest in four or all-wheel drive vehicles. I wonder if Elon plans to make that an option? I’d like to think I was environmentally friendly as I navigate over the protestors. Population control is another cause I’m interested in.
I recommend you hold that decision until you see the actual protestor; some of these folk are pushing 400 lbs. and have numerous piercings. I’m not gonna replace tires or shocks unnecessarily.
These people too closely resemble the campus hysterics demanding safe spaces from micro aggressions and demanding protection from halloween costumes that we're all too familiar with. Thus, they will be dismissed. That old saying about picking your battles comes to mind here. At the same time, that self-defeating behavior is probably dwarfed by the private jet flying and ocean front mansion buying of the truly powerful people who claim that we must give up our way of life because the planet is about to erupt into a ball of fire or be subsumed by melting icebergs or whatever.
IMHO, on the issue of climate change or the environment, it is never effective. The disconnect between blocking traffic and getting legislative action to spend money on a problem that will hardly affect a country as wealthy as the US. They want us to bankrupt ourselves to slow the rise of temps some miniscule fraction of C while China/India continue to not only burn coal for power, but are accelerating their burning of coal for power.
Not to mention, their preferred solutions are going to leave Europe cold and hungry this winter. People are in no mood for juvenile BS right now.
Solar MAY be able to do the job if all the land we use to grow FOOD, is instead used for solar. Be warm, but starve to death.
Solar requires an inordinate amount of land to effectively produce energy, and is so much more in danger of being demolished by every day events than what we have now.
Solar is already cheaper than natural gas and has been getting cheaper every year. Go read what Noah Smith has to say about this. Energy storage is getting better every year too.
Solar is completely subsidized and is not competitive otherwise. Battery storage is not scalable. Right now, and in the near future, it can not cover more than a fraction of the grid for more than a few hours. To make it baseload, batteries would need to cover 100% of the power needed and at least for a few days.
“ Fossil fuels dominate the global power supply because until very recently electricity from fossil fuels was the cheapest. This has changed dramatically. In most places power from new renewables is now cheaper than new fossil fuels.”
You are living in the last decade. Solar cost has dropped 90% in a decade.
“ But renewable energy — especially solar — has become so stunningly cheap that it has started to become much more economical than fossil fuels in many areas and for many applications. It’s looking more and more like fossil fuels are industrial civilization’s “starter pack”, and that renewables are a more permanent foundation for society’s material wealth.
When you say this on social media, you’ll tend to get a lot of pushback. A number of people loudly and angrily claim that renewables will never be able to power our society, and are only competitive with heavy government subsidy. The arguments for this deeply misinformed position range from real but solvable issues to empty knee-jerk slogans and blatant scientific and economic misunderstandings. And they’re often paired with the assertion that only nuclear power can be the energy source of the future.
Out there in the real world, however, businesses and countries around the globe are building solar power for all they’re worth.”
There are hundreds of ways to store power that don’t involve batteries. And batteries are getting better every year.
Funny. So then why do you think coal consumption is up - on the rise for the first time in decades and responsible for greater percentage of global power than pre-pandemic? Why is wood burning up?
How is solar going to power fridges, much less cars, north of Virginia from October through April? Is all that toxic lead waste just an acceptable ecological cost for “the climate”? Are you suggesting Germans and New Yorkers depend on solar power? 😂
How will the cars get charged in the 15 hours a day the sun doesn’t shine in northern latitudes during winter? Wait, will lockdowns for “nonessential” travel save us from a “climate catastrophe” the same way lockdowns “saved” us from Covid? 😂😂😂
What if it’s cloudy? How do you produce batteries that can store intermittent power in cold weather when the batteries degrade so much faster in cold weather creating useful lives of barely a decade? Do you only care about people in the south being able to survive?
The man in the pink shirt is correct. Wars produce mega pollution. Instead of protesting climate changes by blocking traffic & irritating others try marching for global Peace & ending forever wars. Many instigated by america.
My question for these people is always, why not start at the top? I think most people - like me - really fucking hate it when they accidentally (or intentionally?) make ordinary working slobs lives more miserable than they already are.
So for example, in the case of blocking a Georgetown intersection, that to me seems like it's at least on the right track, but there's still going to be poor people in that area (serving the rich)
If they want to win hearts and minds, I think they need to be more careful about fucking up public property and disrupting the lives of people who actually work trying to get to work.
I think what they should do is disrupt the richest of the rich neighborhoods. Like get journo's to follow them as they vault over gates into the wealthiest of the wealthy neighborhoods. Fuck THOSE people's lives up. Make THOSE people's lives miserable. Make THOSE people afraid. Why are R Governors sending people on buses to Martha's Vineyard but these people aren't showing up there EVERY DAY? I saw the video where they disrupted a concert for rich assholes. I'm saying to protest on the streets in front of whichever homes they're currently living in.
I want someone from these organizations to answer that specific question. Why aren't they starting with the Wealthiest? I can't be the only one who wonders about this every time.
That would certainly be a case in point, because I'm sure the good people of Martha's Vinyard would have those people dragged off to jail faster than they got rid of the immigrants shipped in by DeSantis. Faster than Trudeau shut down Truckers bank accounts. Faster than the Jan 6 protesters got thrown in the DC gulag. If you "protest" by harming or inconveniencing regular people, there are likely to be no consequences. If you actually take it up with the people responsible, they will come down on you like a bag of hammers. Most of these "protests" are either theater or actually serve the interests of the state.
That's what's on my mind where I'm going with this. They're avoiding the people who could really fuck their lives up (and would also get away with it). They're fucking with people who don't have as much power to fight back at them.
So what's the term for that, then? What's the term for someone who only picks on those that are unable or unwilling to fight back when they're being pushed around? Hmm... what's the term I'm thinking of? Hmm... I think it starts with a "B-" and rhymes with "Gully." Can't quite get it clear in my mind...
So yeah, that's why I want them to answer this question. I want them to admit that for all their talk of putting themselves in "danger" and "courage" and "bravery" and "self-sacrifice" and "we do what it takes no matter what because it's too damn important" that they're still just attacking regular people well behind the lines.
The part where the leaders cautioned the women that they might be called worse names is all well and good, but if they were really courageous and fighting for lives then they'd risk death and injury instead of just being called a "cunt."
This is why - more and more - everyone hates these pompous asses.
Maybe these traffic blockers and soup throwers can achieve what our political leaders could not… bringing the anti-abortion people and the anti-gun people together to reconsider making exceptions.
“These activists seem sincere, and clearly they feel like less intrusive tactics aren’t getting the job done,” ........ what right do activists have to destroy things they don’t own and didn’t build to get their message across? Or to lay in the middle of the street because they can’t reverse the industrial revolution? These tactics are like a guy hitting on a girl, her saying no, and him deciding to hold her down and rape her to get his message across since his “less intrusive” words weren’t getting the job done of him getting his way.
At some point people need to accept that if they don’t make a convincing argument they don’t get to throw a fit like a toddler. Plus, all of these things are actual crimes. If law enforcement won’t enforce the law, sooner or later, everyday people tired of the 💩 will do it for them, and that’s when things get really ugly.
Destroying artwork, dumping milk out in grocery stores, and blocking highways doesn’t work to accomplish anything aside from showing the world these grown babies have parents that never required them to grow the hell up.
What's wrong with these people, didn't they hear old Joe is all out for protecting our climate? However, what is confusing is his throwing money, millions and millions of dollars at Ukraine, escalating the war, extending the war, and taking the chance of creating a nuclear holocaust that will destroy all life on this planet. Better they should march against that.
No matter your beliefs climate change is a reality, and presents a threat to all life forms on this planet. That being said the tactics employed by these activists too often evoke anger in others, and their good intentions become very counter productive. When I went to college climate change wasn't up for discussion and neither was it part of the curriculum in HS or JHS and that denial took place through the last century even though it is recognized as the century of the environment and evokes names like Rachel Carlson, and her book, Silent Spring. As a result you have generations of people who are ill informed and are climate change deniers. I wish the educational system had made a greater effort to inform students on this issue, since these mass protests, even on a global level, turn people away. It also has to be understood that changes that will alter our present course will take time. Joe Biden's approach is untimely.
You inadvertently undermined your own point and made the "climate change deniers" point for them. Rachel Carson was wrong, and did more harm than good, but her book evoked an emotional response and thus spawned a movement. Emotional belief without facts is religion. Another example is the environmentalists that protest nuclear power and force nuclear plants to shut down to make way for solar panels and wind. Solar and wind require fossil fuel generation as a backup. Nuclear does not. Thus, the push for solar and wind extend the human need to burn fossil fuels into perpetuity. Nevermind the environmental damage caused by solar panels thenselves.
Carson did more damage than any other single individual concerned with the "environment." The message is always the same. "There's an emergency. Only we, the enlightened, care." It seems bird eggs had thinner shells if the female had eaten mosquitoes killed by DDT. So, DDT was banned. Hooray!
Except the price paid was in more mosquitoes, biting more children, transmitting more malaria, and we can measure the price paid in 500,000 additional unneeded deaths of children every year. But the children are small and brown and out of sight, so in this (and other cases) "we care" about the wrong thing, and others pay the price.
Carson, David Brower, Farley Mowat, Greta, the list goes on. This has been a tactic of the environment left for ages; the need to lie for the "greater good." And each time it comes back and bites them in the ass.
that's the Dunce version of the story, Swagman. It's a Right-wing Ideological Fable.
You're just plain wrong on this, Bill. I don't know where you're getting your information, but it certainly wasn't the book Silent Spring.
DDT is banned in the US, but it is not banned for pest control globally. The UN, which only got involved with establishing a worldwide standard in 2004, made a specific exemption for pest vector control.
From the Wiki on DDT:
"The Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants, which took effect in 2004, put a global ban on several persistent organic pollutants, and restricted DDT use to vector control. The convention was ratified by more than 170 countries. Recognizing that total elimination in many malaria-prone countries is currently unfeasible absent affordable/effective alternatives, the convention exempts public health use within World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines from the ban.[62] Resolution 60.18 of the World Health Assembly commits WHO to the Stockholm Convention's aim of reducing and ultimately eliminating DDT.[63] Malaria Foundation International states, "The outcome of the treaty is arguably better than the status quo going into the negotiations. For the first time, there is now an insecticide which is restricted to vector control only, meaning that the selection of resistant mosquitoes will be slower than before."[64]
Despite the worldwide ban, agricultural use continued in India,[65] North Korea, and possibly elsewhere.[20] As of 2013, an estimated 3,000 to 4,000 tons of DDT were produced for disease vector control, including 2,786 tons in India.[66] DDT is applied to the inside walls of homes to kill or repel mosquitoes. This intervention, called indoor residual spraying (IRS), greatly reduces environmental damage. It also reduces the incidence of DDT resistance.[67] ..." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDT
A passage that alludes to another thing that Rachel Carson- a trained aquatic biologist- got right: insects evolve to develop resistance to chemical pesticides, and the more frequently they're used, the more intractable of a problem that resistance tends to get.
I do what I can to avoid Wiki (fill in the blank). It's largely a popularity-based source. I do go to the citations and references and often find something useful that way.
To crickets from the critics. It’s funny they love to spout opinions but when presented with facts they are silent.
Heart not working. Comment liked.
People get Rachel Carson wrong. Carson did not advocate for a total ban on DDT- most certainly not as a means of addressing public health problems like malaria mosquitos!
From the Wiki entry for Rachel Carson, including reference to a direct quote by her:
"...In regards to the pesticide DDT, Carson never actually called for an outright ban. Part of the argument she made in Silent Spring was that even if DDT and other insecticides had no environmental side effects, their indiscriminate overuse was counter-productive because it would create insect resistance to the pesticide(s), making the pesticides useless in eliminating the target insect populations:
No responsible person contends that insect-borne disease should be ignored. The question that has now urgently presented itself is whether it is either wise or responsible to attack the problem by methods that are rapidly making it worse. The world has heard much of the triumphant war against disease by controlling insect vectors of infection. However, it has heard little of the other side of the story—the defeats, the short-lived triumphs that now strongly support the alarming view that the insect enemy has been made actually stronger by our efforts. Even worse, we may have destroyed our very means of fighting.[63]
Carson further noted that "Malaria programmes are threatened by resistance among mosquitoes"[64] and emphasized the advice given by the director of Holland's Plant Protection Service: "Practical advice should be 'Spray as little as you possibly can' rather than 'Spray to the limit of your capacity' ... Pressure on the pest population should always be as slight as possible."[65]..." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_Carson
Have you read Carson's book Silent Spring? I have. It called attention to how casually chlorinated hydrocarbon pesticides were being used for inappropriate purposes like massive aerial spraying of woodlands in attempts to stop invasive pests like gypsy moths, and use of mass quantities in efforts to eradicate fire ants. A fool's errand.
Rachel Carson also pointed out that there was often complete disregard for the amounts used, neglect about precautions for workers, and no attention given to limiting the use of pesticides during inappropriate weather conditions and seasons. She was in the forefront of arguing in favor of biological alternatives to kill insect pests, and those alternatives have often proved much more effective at controlling insect pest outbreaks than chemical sprays. Examples of the superiority of biological control measures over chemical pesticides include the present-day efforts to control the gypsy moth and the fire ant. And the boll weevil, whose infestations once made cotton agriculture one of the heaviest pesticide users, is now on the verge of being eradicated from the US on the basis of ecological researches into the requirements of its life cycle. There's still some pesticide use, but it's been incorporated into a larger strategy that centers on getting rid of all cotton plants after harvesting, which deprives the boll weevil of the habitat it requires to thrive and reproduce. https://www.stltoday.com/boll-weevil-eradication-closes-in-on-success/article_70c67ccf-cae1-5238-8af4-49e4645a4dfb.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCyidsxIDtQ
David MacKay's final interview before cancer got him. He makes your point that if you believe in anthropogenic global warming (I don't; he does; doesn't matter here.) you must still be rational in how you address it.
And never mind the damage done by nuclear power plants. Go talk to people who live near them. I talked to people in Braidwood, IL . I did and the picture is ugly
What damage? High paying jobs?
Several nukes in the Toronto area
No damage
I got a relative that works at Braidwood. I'm not being antagonstic, but do you have sources or did you publish your findings?
Yes, I am amazed that those who advocate for nuclear power are delusional in not realizing that they are NUCLEAR. We are concerned about nuclear war but we're not concerned about placing a nuclear facility in our neighborhoods?
I can remember when they were trying to dispose of spent nuclear waste in the 1970s and they couldn't find anywhere safe to put it! Every community said, "Not in my back yard!" Finally they put it into the oceans in (presumably) safe containers. Of course the ocean species didn't get a voice.
If you think in terms of 1970 then everything is bad.
Of course now they have reactors that can take that old waste and extract all the rest of the energy and then you end up with almost nothing.
Read up on it.
Nuclear is the only future on offer if you believe we need to stop burning fossil fuels
You do understand that there is a big difference between nuclear weapons and nuclear power, no? Nuclear weapons depend on detonation. Nuclear power depends on the natural radioactive decay of Uranium and the heat that generates in order to boil water and turn it into steam. That steam is then sent through turbines to generate electricity. In a natural gas or coal powered plant you burn the fuel to generate steam that then is sent through turbines. It's the same basic principal in both cases. You boil water and create electricity.
There's no risk of a detonation. There is risk of overboiling water and superheating it to the point that it blows out, but it's a tiny risk. Again, this is the steam blowing up the plant, not the nuclear fuel. There's no mushroom cloud. There's no fallout. The only real risk is to any cleanup crews that have to go in and clean up the mess. Nuclear power is safe. And yes, I would welcome a nuclear power plant in my backyard over miles and miles and miles of wind turbines or solar panel fields it would take to generate the same amount of electricity.
Would you rather live next to a nuclear power plant or a coal fired power plant?
Just as an aside.... when I was in college in the early 70s, the big bogeyman climate change was that the next Ice Age was on its way. So fifty years later, the climate change is the “ polar” opposite? So the Ice Age thing was miscalculated?
I can tell that you were never really informed about climate change based on your commentary here, since teachers were no very informative on this subject back then. In the 70's it was barely discussed if referenced if at all. By the way some fifty years later a lot of information has been accumulated to substantiate the reality of climate change. I do think Joe's ways of going about it really sucks.
When you assume.... actually I believe it was on the cover of Time or Newsweek Magazine which back then were highly respected news magazines. Fifty years later is actually not a lot of information as either was the fifty years of information on which the climate scientists at that time based their reality of cooling temperatures and expanding polar caps. But yes, I was a 21 year old college kid who didn’t take that threat too seriously and seeing as the science then didn’t pan out, I dismissed the predicted frigid temps. Fifty years of climate study is like the earth blinking once. The big difference between then and now is that “climate change” has become a very lucrative emotionally fueled industry.
No Martha, not true. I wish it were, but it's not. Much more evidence has accumulated since the 70''s. Temperatures are warming around the globe. When the industrial revolution came about they were concerned about the effects of carbon dioxide on the environment, so it's not even a recent concern. I still feel there is so much denial because people were not educated in their science classrooms on this issue, then you have the oil companies implementing campaigns of denial, as did the cigarette companies when they tied smoking to cancer. Lots of lies. Personally I think Biden's agenda in this area should have been put off, since it's a time when many are feeling vulnerable after dealing with a pandemic. not to mention the lying the democrats pushed when it came to Trump. I also don't approve of the way people go about expressing their concern over this issue which turns people off. That purple haired brat with the can of tomato juice really made me angry. We have to do something, but changes don't happen overnight, and require decades to implement.
Fran, May I respectfully ask that you read this terrific piece from Prof Richard Lindzen, of MIT (my Alma Mater). See if it changes your mind, or at least your certitude. Best, Tom
https://co2coalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Happer-Lindzen-SEC-6-17-22.pdf
Interesting article, but it has been said, no PREACHED, that SCIENCE has come to a consensus that no one dare question.
II. SCIENCE DEMONSTRATES THERE IS NO CLIMATE-RELATED RISK CAUSED BY FOSSIL FUELS AND CO2, AND THEREFORE NO RELIABLE SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE SUPPORTING THE PROPOSED RULE
Climate change is not a danger to us and the planet, you have no proof of that whatsoever.
I am not someone who works in that field of science. You want proof read those who are.
You mean those whose views are allowed to be disseminated.
I do, thanks for your concern
The climate is a very complicated complex system. See https://billheath.substack.com/p/complex-systems?utm_source=email.
We are a part of the complex system and cannot help but affect it. Can you list the 100 most powerful actors in the system? How does a negligible contribution of a relatively inefficient greenhouse gas rank as the most significant and powerful actor? I don't deny climate change; instead, I am a skeptic. All scientists are.
Bill - great post. Like a lot of our 'problems', its more about power and control than the greater good.
Bill if you are really interested in this subject there are many sources available. Whether you believe it or not does not change the reality that climate change is happening and the environment on a world wide level is being affected in a negative way. The US, and China, especially China, since it produces carbon emissions almost three times greater then ours, but all industrial country's need to implement change. The overall temperature in the world has gone up almost 2 degrees in a little more then a hundred years, oceans are warming, glaciers are melting. research it. I am not ignorant of the natural world, the environment and all that. It was my major in school, taught it, teach it. No one is telling you not to hop on a plane, turn off your lights or dump your car for one that works on electricity. I think it's absurd that Biden in the midst of political turmoil, a pandemic, and rising costs, etc, decided to deal with climate change by shutting down the Keystone pipeline, then implement a moratorium on new oil and gas leasing on federal lands while a quarter of our oil and gas is gotten that way. All that has cost elevated gas prices and I've listened to people cursing him out at the pump. Then talk about electric cars at 60 thousand a pop. It's like telling a fat lady who just lost her husband that she has to immediately go on a diet and cut back on the wine she enjoys with her evening meal. It feels like he wants to sabotage the movement . It takes time to bring the kind of change we need, as well as educating people on this issue. I also don't approve of purple haired brats throwing tomato soup at my beloved van Gogh painting, or what many did during the the global climate change week, since it turns people off of the message.
Fran, I'm with you until you make a leap of faith similar to that entailed by religion, from temperatures are rising (no skepticism here on that point) to carbon being at fault. You provide no proof; I've read a good sample of the scientific papers, understand them, and most are pure rubbish. The IPCC is a political, not scientific, body.
The world's top experts in glaciers are in (surprise) Iceland, not New York. They agree that the glaciers in the Northern Hemisphere are shrinking. They point out that those in the southern hemisphere are growing by an equal amount, and the global mass of glaciers is stable.
Follow the money. There are infinite funds available to study the problem of carbon emissions and climate change. As soon as a scientist concludes that there is no significant problem, then there's no follow-on study to be performed, and the scientist must perforce find another crisis.
Don't just look at the past 200 (or even 20 hundred) years. Talk to geologists. The greatest rise in global temperatures took place millions of years before humans existed and amounted to about 18 degrees Fahrenheit in a ten-year period, evidently due to a rupture in an undersea cavity containing methane, a genuinely powerful greenhouse gas. Look at historical records; the earth swings from warm to cool on multiple interlocked cycles. We are currently in an abnormal warm period and have been since the Little Ice Age.
Of course there are many natural causes which elevate the global temperature like volcanic eruptions, sunlight variations, etc, but when they talk about climate change they are not talking about earth’s climate change due to natural causes, not related to human activity, and have been with us forever, and will be , but their influence is small, or they occur too slowly to explain the the very rapid elevations that are seen today over a very short period of time. Your background isn't in science otherwise you wouldn't be using this time worn explanation of why climate change isn't so. I am not trying to indoctrinate you just presenting the common consensus among scientists in this field. You are wasting your time in trying to make me believe climate change just ain't so. Science is my background.
I have a simple question for you Fran - how much of the last 200 years of climate change was completely natural versus how much was anthropogenic? Surely you've read enough to know this, right? Otherwise, how can you claim any factual basis for your concern?
Listen curmudgeon, good name for you by the way. since you fail to intimidate me with your lack of charm, and my background is in science, answer your own question and I'll correct any wrong thinking on your part. How's that?
Voice of reason unheard in MSM circles.
Thanks.
I would offer that the “educational system” has already done enough damage. Ideological power hungry twats.
In retrospect, I'm fairly satisfied with most of my American public school education, although admittedly that was 50 years ago. Despite the fact that my early record of superior academic achievement went into a nosedive once I entered 7th grade, and didn't really recover until I was over 30, as a "returning" college student.
I think there are a lot of ways the system could be improved- I'm a longtime John Taylor Gatto fan. And it's undeniable that the public school system has propagandistic aspects; notwithstanding all the bird being whipped over "cancellation" these days as if it were a brand-new thing, it's always been the case that any public school teacher who dares voice pointed objections about ongoing US military interventions or skeptical questions about US foreign policy in their classroom is risking their job security.
No but drag shows or sex with students should be a risk
fwiw, in 1973, one of my classmates in my public high school (suburban middle-class school district) married one of my high school teachers. iirc, she was impregnated by him in her senior year. It didn't even rate as gossip, just something that happened.
Thinking about it, I'll admit to some idle curiosity about how that worked out for both of them. But I refuse to consider a relationship like that to be deviant or perverted, per se.
As a teacher I'm sure I can write a longer critical critique of our educational system.
believe me, so could I.
No matter your beliefs, no.
sorry, wrong. you've drawn your inference from a false assertion. GIGO.
Exactly. Someone trying to get to work or having some type of emergency is going to get very violent with these adolescents. Or some driver totally loses it and plows right through them.
You have a right to peaceful protest. You do not have a right to block highways or damage property.
Zero sympathy for these so called protesters. They are narcissistic people saying “ look at me”.
Agree. I tend to think violence and destruction rarely, if ever, actually works over any medium to long time frame. Blocking roads can work, with a sympathetic cause and when well organized, in a meaningful to the actual cause location, and when the protesters remain peaceful. It almost never works when the protesters are acting like bratty children randomly throwing themselves down on random highways causing great frustration to passing motorist that are reminded the brat in the road would like to outlaw the job the passerby’s are driving to in order too feed their family along with their mode of getting to said job.
Did you say the same about the Canadian truck brigade when they were blocking traffic?
There are important differences between truckers, who contribute important labor/ services to society, engaging in civil disobedience for the right not to be forced to be injected with a potentially dangerous experimental drug they don’t want to be injected with, and woke doomsday cult climate zealots flinging themselves down on highways, or throwing soup at priceless artwork, demanding the implementation of pro-scarcity policies meant to intentionally starve, freeze, and impoverish hundreds of millions of innocent human beings.
The truckers were seeking reasonable personal freedoms/ civil liberties while the climate zealots are seeking to destroy the lives of complete strangers via demands that aren’t well articulated, can’t ever be met, and arise from the religious worship of faulty climate models that claim to predict temperatures for the next 100-1,000 years yet can’t replicate already observed temperatures over any 10 year time period.
Well articulated and reasonable demands are a key component of successful civil rights movements involving civil disobedience. The reasonableness of the demands under scrutiny is crucial to gaining lasting public support that changes hearts and minds, including mine.
The idea that methods alone should somehow dictate the success or public support of any movement is intellectually lazy, and in the case of actions intended for public nuisance or disruption, has been frequently disproven as a theory. Most attempts to gain attention via self-proclaimed “civil disobedience” for a “cause” ends in a jail sentence and not much else. I am now, and have always, supported equal treatment under the law - something the Canadian truckers were not given in comparison to woke Canadian protesters.
The doomsday climate cult might gain attention from these stunts, but public support will continue to be fleeting at best. Reality gets in the way - A slightly warmer Earth is a greener Earth where more food grows, CO2 is plant food, deaths from weather continue to drop dramatically globally, storm frequency has and severe weather has been mostly declining in recent decades, the oceans have actually risen only 7.4 inch since 1900 (in total - less than a foot - most of the Netherlands is and has been 12-21 feet below sea level). Under scrutiny it doesn’t make much sense to destroy people and the environment now so the “climate” can’t do it down the road. 🤷♀️
As far as the “Earth” goes, it’ll be just fine even if it gets really really warm, and again, most people know this. Many learned in elementary school that during much of the reign of the dinosaurs the Earth was much warmer, both CO2 levels and oxygen levels were much higher, oceans hundreds of meters above where that are today - and life was thriving.
Without the protestor demands withstanding scrutiny, these stunts come across as annoying acts by entitled brats who have too much free time and are spending that free time trying to bully strangers. Unlike the truckers, the followers of these doomsday “climate” cults aren’t going to gain popular support because their demands can’t withstand genuine scrutiny or actual outcomes. There is a reason its Michael Shellenberger who has the largest Substack on the climate and is quietly gaining popularity.
I assume you supported Truckers' Protest, they used the same tactics. What right did they have? Traffic jamming, even bridge jamming and somehow everyone was cheering.
The Truckers had a sympathetic cause and, under the Canadian Charter rights, a legal right to protest as they did.
The civil rights movement and suffrage were also peaceful protests (on the side of the protesters). The protesters in these cases could articulate what they wanted and gained popular support as a result of well-articulated reasonable demands that demanded nothing of others beyond equal treatment under the law as human beings. The protestors were entirely peaceful and, like the Canadian truckers, didn’t destroy things or demand others give up their lives and futures to accommodate their demands that centered around personal freedoms and equal rights.
The climate alarmists can’t articulate anything that will gain support. Their demands range from forced starvation of billions to forced abortions (which is what government population management is). The climate alarmists contribute nothing. They can’t articulate anything beyond nonsense dystopian babble. They have no idea what they are talking about. They offer zero solutions besides pushing crap to kill and impoverish a lot a people.
Anyone can claim they are engaging in civil disobedience. A car jacker can claim they are trying to combat wealth inequality. If anyone is going to block a highway in the name of a cause they darn well better have a sympathetic cause that gains popular support because civil disobedience that fails to garner sympathy is just plain old breaking the law. The climate alarmists are spoiled brats plain old breaking the law and it doesn’t begin to help their supposed cause.
As usual, NCmom, you wrote my answer 🤣
Now I'll have to compose my thoughts farther down in the massive number of comments.
Guess I just slept too late.
So NCMom’s criteria for what constitutes disruptive hooliganism or righteous civil disobedience is whether she sympathizes with their cause or not…
I am rather surprised more people, NCMom included, don’t grasp the problem with this…
Do you honestly believe it’s moral or realistic to assert those engaging in attention seeking criminal antics are the ones who get to decide if society see them as engaging in “righteous civil disobedience” regardless of the facts or objective reality?
As you well know, I am one single person and I alone cannot possibly decide what causes do and do not gain material support from the general public. On a personal level, we should differentiate hooligans from the righteous on the basis of our support, or lack there of, for the “cause” being promoted via illegal antics that often come at a very real cost to others that have nothing to do with the situation.
And they’re not brats! Yeah!
both the Truckers Protest and the Climate “roadblock” Activists are forms of Civil Disobedience, which I support.
the problem tho, is when the governmental response is disproportionate to the actual crime or disobedience (in both cases, blocking traffic).
the climate protesters went to jail for the weekend, the truckers had their trucks towed and bank accounts frozen.
Blocking traffic includes blocking emergency vehicles like ambulances- and also drivers handling personal emergencies, at which point it's no longer fun and games. Not a tactic I endorse.
Ethical civil disobedience always reckons with the liability of penalties as a consequence of breaking the law. All too many young activists nowadays have been lulled into some cloud-castle fantasy that "civil disobedience" is a foolproof legal defense, and that any activism taken in the course of "redress of grievances" is indemnified against criminal charges!
This false impression has been encouraged by the tactical response of many locales where mass demonstrations have taken place- to dismiss all charges against demonstrators as long as their offenses are limited to "trespassing" or "obstructing traffic". The local courts in cases like those aren't dismissing the charges because the arrests were invalid, they're doing it for their own convenience.
While I can't stand Marcuse's ideas about "repressive tolerance" as a catch-all social explanation, I have to concede that the concept isn't entirely invalid: in any situation where it's taken for granted in advance all around that practically all of the arrested demonstrators are simply going to be detained for a few hours before being set free with no charges, the demonstrators are merely pretending to engage in acts of civil disobedience, and the police are merely pretending to arrest them.
I know I heard from one trucker in an interview and he said they were being very careful to keep roads open for emergency services. I think they went too far with the honking initially but they stopped that too.
Ironically, Capital Beltway traffic is already so prone to unscheduled slowdowns (and others you can practically set your watch by) that the trucker's "slowdown" protest hardly registered as an obstacle. A fact that also calls into question the "tactic" of pedestrians blocking a highway for the purpose of protesting climate change, something something...what's the specific target- petro-powered vehicles? the disinclination of commuters to use Metro, which is only a hybrid solution anyway, given that it usually still requires an auto commute?
Exactly how "effective" is blocking the freeway as a tactic to protest personal auto use, given that the drivers who receive notice about the obstacle will simply re-route off of an exit to the network of surface streets, often requiring a greater travel distance than the usual routine?
So why do it, then? To post videos on Instagram?
Any time someone wants to pursue a plan of political activism, the first thing to do is to be clear about goals, and the be clear about tangible benefits resulting from the action other than to the personal egos of the activists. Which starts by being real about it, that there are status bennies (or at least the promise of them) for the individual personal ego of the activists. Activists put themselves onstage, in the role of "hero of the people." So admit that upfront, because it's required for clarity. Because there has to be more to it than that, hmm? There had better be.
The next thing to do is to take personal ego out of the picture, and consider the benefits of a project for everyone else. Be clear about messaging. An example of an unclear idea is implicitly blaming everyone driving a car on the freeway (who doesn't own an electric vehicle.) That is not the place to start.
Have the protesters ever considered mounting a lobbying effort to have a sufficiently adequate fleet of circulating LNG or EV-powered light buses and vans offering door to door commuter service to Metro, with subscriber-based door to door service on subscriber phone request in daylight non-peak hours? Door to door dispatch service available, room for cargo like groceries and shopping, with driver assistance. Subscriber model, like $100-$200 a year, less for senior citizens. (Leave taxicabs, Uber, and Lyft for the night shift.) That idea has been around for at least 40 years, but no one could figure out how to make it work back in the 1980s, so it was forgotten about. Now we're well into the portable phone era, the LNG/EV-powered fleet era, and also the era when the benefits of lowering auto traffic per se can plainly be viewed as a worthwhile public investment. Consult with some traffic engineers and professional drivers, and figure it out. Makes a lot more sense than any damn UAV fantasy game.
I guarantee, if anyone- I don't care who- could clearly map out how a diversified public transit option using light buses and vans offering last-mile & cargo service could relieve a sizeable percentage of the auto traffic currently on the road in traffic-choked cities and suburbs, the locals would go for it whether it's Washington DC or Houston.
Even if they're already regular riders, practically any suburban commuter is disconcerted by the requirement to either drive and park or walk-wait-ride-transfer on a pre-scheduled fixed route before boarding at a metro station. And lugging something larger than a backpack or briefcase is something between difficult and impossible.
If they could get door-to-station service, or door-to-door to/from a market or mall, they'd go for it.
There's entirely too much rote formulaic emphasis in the pop media on "Americans love affair with their cars" as an explanation for the failures of public transit. There are a lot of cities where the automobile option isn't about love, it's just a flat necessity, and a hated one. And it's entirely possible to love the freedom of a personal automobile and still prefer public transit, because the "freedom" of a job commute that requires 3 hours a day harnessed to 2 tons of gadgets that you're required to drive is really dubious.
(I wonder how much traffic would benefit from an overall 20% reduction in vehicle use, or by a 30% reduction at rush hour. How many hours of life would become less tedious, for everyone involved?)
Public transit needs to be as close to door to door as possible, and it also needs to allow safe storage for cargo- because that's a big reason for people to go out. For groceries, if nothing else. But grocery shopping doesn't work very well, bus-stop to bus-stop. But that's the limit of public transit service. So the primary impediments to increasing public transit ridership are practical, not about American individualist love affairs with their cars.
yes, that’s a very insightful observation.
my point is I support civil disobedience, but one has to accept the consequences whether that is being arrested and charged or dealing with a desperate motorist trying to get to his pregnant wife.
they seem to think that the “rightness” of their actions invalidate any prosecution, which, in turn, invalidates the purpose of civil disobedience.
hardly MLK or Thoreau in a prison cell.
Being in a prison cell does nothing unless you can flood the prisons. Even then it's out of sight, out of mind. But usually a cause which can summon that kind of support can more easily go into the streets and annoy people enough just by demonstrating.
No artwork was destroyed. The painting was behind a pane of glass (tho you wouldn't have learned that reading Matt's previous article about it).
It was a prank, and kind of an avant garde act of theatrical activism, using the Van Gogh as a prop in the stunt.
The painting was protected not exactly by glass, but more like a glaze, which an art restorer friend tells me can be made of various substances (including glass), and though designed to protect against abrasion isn’t exactly tested for soup toss. It worked out okay, this time, but these dopes couldn’t have been sure of that and can’t be going forward. Secondly, they choice an “iconic painting” for a reason. They didn’t throw soup on a statue to Ada Walter or on an indigenous graveyard. They picked a painting because they imagine it a meaningless bourgeois affectation, thinking about its price-tag in dollars as opposed to its actual worth, which they obviously don’t understand or recognize. That’s why this episode is worrisome, because it fits the pattern of people in the social media age being blind to the value of anything except as symbols within a certain political framework, of the Iliad or Beethoven's 9th being useless except as means of perpetuating the decadent before-times. Attacking art is symbolic.
It reminds me of the senseless destruction of the Buddhist statues at Bamiyan by the Taliban. Barbarians mindlessly adhering to a destructive faith.
YES!!
One person's priceless symbol pointing to the indescribable eternal is another's idol to a false god. Who among us has the singular truth? No one. We are all blind men, each holding a small poece of the elephant, declaring that we know its truth. And this is why we must not destroy art, but contemplate it, for each moment betweenart and a unique perceiver is a moment of *creation* - and bring opportunity for a changed perception and thus changed action. Shutdown of highways used by many for living their lives as best as they can in the moment and destruction of globally known art are the two sides of the same anti-creative, anti-life coin. Climate activists begin to communicate themselves to be anti-creative- which is only a hair's breadth away from anti-Creator. It is tragic that they cannot see this. I believe THIS is one primary failure of how we've been educating our young ones: in the misapprehension of the power we humans have over Creation. The sad irony of hearing Indigenous peoples invoked here is not lost on me.
That’s why 90% of Africa’s cultural heritage is in the museums outside of Africa. It had to be taken from them lest they destroy it.
Damn. Barbarians, huh?
And who said the white man’s burden is no longer?
This will probably betray my caveman status but I can't help wondering if they soup bombed a Jackson Pollock canvas would anyone have noticed?
:)
Depending on the soup it might have improved some of the drips…minestrone yes, pea soup no
Who exactly are they saving the world FOR? Certainly not the people in the blocked cars, or anyone who values artistic genius and wishes to see it preserved, or anyone ( my guess) who doesn’t sign up to their vague, self-righteous manifesto. And I think that all of them have been emboldened by the fact that there were no consequences for burning a police station to the ground or pulling down statues of historical significance. Will these people be prosecuted? I doubt it.
As a theatre artist, I can attest to what you’re saying. Plays today have become proxies for ideological battle: what gets produced, what doesn’t, who gets to tell what stories, who doesn’t. The intrinsic worth of a work of theatrical literature as a testament to the ever developing and ongoing discovery of human nature is now a thing of the past, and now they only serve as flashpoints for cancellations and culture war bomb-throwing. Look no dither than this:
https://www.vulture.com/2022/10/1776-star-sara-porkalob-interview-molasses-to-rum.html
I believe Mamet has things to say on this - in a book he recently released to howls from the left.
How do you measure the intrinsic value of a work of art, so you know which can be ethically destroyed?
Can I destroy my own art?
Well, you read The Fountainhead, didn't you? Minus the bodice-ripping parts, the book can be summed up as an exposition on the right of a creator to do as he pleases with their works, and the abhorrence of having their individual creativity interfered with in any way by meddlers and critics. It's a fictional set piece in bold outline; Ayn Rand was allergic to nuance. But it's a mostly valid work. (Whereas Atlas Shrugged, John Galt etc. and the rest of it, that's just solipsism for wannabe Nietszchean Superboys.)
My take: anyone can throw a pail of soup. That act isn't elevated just because it's accompanied by a statement of elevated intent.
Or American Statues in 2020. For what? Of course, sooner or later, one of these lunatics is going to get Wile E. Coyote’d on I-95, and become another hero of the left.
Reminds me. I've been wanting to order a pair of ACME rocket powered roller skates. The user reviews are nearly 4.5 stars. Free delivery with Amazon Prime.
You mean, like, the Seattle protestor who got hit on the highway?
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/two-protesters-seattle-seriously-injured-when-hit-car-closed-highway-n1232907
Granted, the highway was closed at night, but that happened more than two years ago and, while the protestor did become a hero of the left to some degree, it seems to have been lost in the shuffle in the "I support the current thing" mindset that runs rampant.
Not trying to be dismissive of what happened to the protestor, just observing that what happened has been forgotten by many.
I don't mind a bit of civil disobedience now and then. As a newspaper reporter long ago, I and my dog were told to leave the Boston Commons or face charges during a rowdy anti-war protest.
The mounted police officer and I had a heated conversation, which ended when I gave him two choices. Arrest me and my dog, in which case he'll likely be bitten by my German Shepard, and I'll become a hero for all the press, as I compose my account of police brutality for the my editors back in Bangor, Maine.
The war our government started in Vietnam was the tail end of our stop the commies efforts. As usual we made more enemies than friends back then. Come to think of it, our goverment continues to make more enemies than friends.
What I observed in that video was a group of people who have not carefully read all the research papers and reports by the UN, and yes I have read all of the recent reports from the UN as well as studies by scientists whose agree the global climate is gradually warming.
Instead they believe headlines and sensational news reports that attribute nearly every tornado or hurricane to be caused by the villains responsible for "climate change."
If there is any need for silly protests, the paucity of their cause will soon enough be exposed. I learned long ago that good intentions are no excuse for stupid actions.
As usual, Matt, thanks for providing coverage of this recent escalation by the doom within (pick a time frame) crowd.
“ in which case he'll likely be bitten by my German Shepard, and I'll become a hero for all the press”
In reality, you would be arrested, and your dog would have been held for an undetermined amount of time to be tested, or the dog would have been shot on the spot.
I know of no “heros” who are willing to have their dog killed for the owner’s beliefs.
Took the words out of my mouth. His dog would have been euthanized if not shot. I suspect this story if it happened has been embellished. Risking the life of your dog for some political stunt is no act of bravery.
Admittedly, Jan, I was a pig headed young man. My older self gets the shakes when I recall my younger follies.
The reality of that conflict was that I was far away from the rowdy crowd, and had a reporter's notebook and pencil in my hand. Most members of Boston's finest did not want to waste time after their shift filling out paper work. And the mounted officer calmed down about the same time as I came to my senses.
He admitted he had not carefully listened when I told him what I was doing.
I think you have created the figure of the social media addled humorless activist bent on destroying everything…a figure who refuses to see the value in anything beyond its instrumentality. I just don’t think this figure exists. It reminds me of the internet folks that rail against “cultural marxists.” Who are they talking about? What are they talking about?
You’ve painted these two activists as the progenitors of a terrorist group in a dystopian novel.
Get a hold of yourself. These activists are not the people on this planet that make life so miserable. You know exactly who those people are - you’ve written about many of them.
For sure. The “green movement” has been, entirely captured by monopoly capital.
I agree with much of what you’ve written so just chill!
All I’m saying is that the reaction to these two activists is pretty extreme and misplaced.
The idea that there is some social movement interested in destroying so called western values, that this is corrupting the youth, etc is suspect.
I believe that this intense response to these two activists is actually about something else…I don’t know what exactly but the response is way out of proportion.
Matt, most of the world’s paintings are in vaults, unseen and protected as investments. Sure, these works aren’t destroyed but no one gets to see them either.
If your gripe is that these “dopes” spit on the value of art for civilization, etc, then what about these wealthy art collectors that hide it all away?
As for the comment that maybe if an oil executive saw the sunflowers painting he might be moved to stop spoiling the earth?
You have to be joking. An oil executive who inherited both an oil company and a private equity fund sits as the chair of the board for the National Gallery of Australia.
I imagine you will find many board members of many museums owning oil companies and totally unmoved by any of the art and beauty they control.
That being said, destroying art is dumb.
What’s more effective is sabotaging pipeline construction like they did in North Dakota.
Sorry to say but the fetish for “conversation” has got us nowhere on this issue.
That's because a conversation implies two sides. Radical environmentalists want to harangue us and then impose their vision. Not having convinced anyone to go along with it.
Bro, I don’t feel
Harangued by environmentalists. Maybe it’s the company you keep.
I love the “two sides” comment. What are the two sides anyway?
Perhaps one side is unaccountable transnational mega corporations that only want money and they will destroy and kill whoever to get it. Perhaps the other side then is the whiny brats who KEEP RUINING EVERYTHING.
Or maybe…One side wants to drive around, build stuff, move to Mars, eat cheeseburgers and the other side wants everyone to be sad!
One side is down to fuck, the other side wants to have a conversation about consent.
I don’t know…just spitballing.
There was nothing avant garde (new or unusual) about their actions. It is the same tired whining from the same pampered brats who decry civilization at every turn. Avant garde would have been advocating for a massive push to build nuclear power plants to replace fossil fuels for electricity generation. "Renewables" are too expensive and too intermittent to ever be baseload power.
Try asking the genius protestors what the solutions are and you often found they never got that far into the subject. These are rich bored despicable dilettantes who have never worked a day in their lives. One day they will wake up and realize they are the bad guys in this cowboy movie
I doubt that most of them will ever wake up. They are just too stupid.
You're right, which makes the buzzword "woke" a semantic misnomer and another linguistic fraud perpetrated by Big Media and the Media/Marxist Industrial complex.
Since they will never, as you observed, wake up - by definition they can never be woke (or at least what the word woke should mean).
Thank you PeteRR for injecting some science to the discussion. The protestors, which looked like a bunch of smug 60’s retreads and wannabes, lacked any such practical insights and probably couldn’t bluff their way through a basic climate science exam. Since China is by far the greatest emitter of CO2, why aren’t they protesting in front of the Chinese embassy?
It has to be said that if China wasn't supplying so much of the consumer goods market in this country, and worldwide- about 1/4 of everything is made in China now- they wouldn't be nearly the carbon emitter they are presently. The PRC is also of course in the forefront of R&D of advanced nuclear plant designs, as well as solar panel production. The Biden administration has taken steps to fund domestic efforts to research Gen III and Iv nuclear plants and to ramp up solar panel production, because it is not a good idea to allow China to achieve a monopoly over such crucially needed technologies.
I think climate activists need to outgrow their tactical ineptitude. But I'll take them over climate heating deniers, who are basically running interference for the pollutocrats of lobbying organizations like the API, using the tactics of Roger Stone ("there's no need for logical consistency, as long as it makes the opposition look bad.")
Great comments. All true. The subject of who “owns” the pollution as in your example is a really interesting one that deserves a lot more coverage.
Betcha they both had pricey iPhones made by asian slaves, with materials mined from the third world.
If these dipshits want to go back to the 19th century (but without horses or burning wood), let em find out how that plays out. But the wiser among us already know what that end game looks like, and therefore won't go along with it. The goal of this shit is to depopulate the planet, which these useless idiots won't figure out until they're next on the kill-conveyor.
It is now cheaper to build renewables than to run current power plants. Intermittency will be regulated through grid-level battery systems. If your information is over 6 months old, it's wrong. That's how fast this industry is moving.
You have no idea what the heck you are talking about. Did you also materialize a billion child slaves in Africa to make the minerals for this endeavor magically appear?
I hope you're referring to Cobalt mining.
"Tesla’s world’s largest battery is moving ahead with expansion: Tesla is switching to lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery cells for its utility-scale Megapack energy storage product"
https://www.utilitydive.com/news/tesla-shifts-battery-chemistry-for-utility-scale-storage-megawall/600315/
In case you missed it: "LFP batteries do not use cobalt, a critical mineral that can be expensive"
There are no grid-level battery systems and due to raw material constraints, there won't be for a long time.
On top of which no battery system can overcome a regional lack of wind. Summer of 2021 all of Western Europe experienced a weeks long lull, putting those countries into an energy deficit that we still haven't emerged from.
Civilization requires on-call energy generation. Not just whatever Mother Nature is willing to provide. In 2021 the UK received just 18% of the nameplate power from all of it's wind and solar generation. 358 gigawatts of potential power and 50.5 gigs of actual power.
If there was a way to embed an image, I would provide it.
Do you mean a specific country? The Hornsdale battery in southern Australia comes to mind. US tripled battery storage in 2021 - ?
https://cleantechnica.com/2022/08/02/grid-scale-battery-storage-in-us-tripled-in-2021/
Here's a quick list:
https://www.renewableenergyworld.com/solar/10-notable-battery-storage-projects-that-went-live-in-2021/#gref
You are correct - batteries are required for a stable baseload. Otherwise renewables can't overcome intermittency issues.
Raw material constraints are being side-stepped with new cell chemistries. There is a Megapack factory coming online this year.
Why do you say - "There are no grid-level battery systems" Do you mean grids that are 100% batteries?
A system of batteries to power an entire regional grid for weeks.
Last summer if France hadn't had dispatchable energy from their nuke plant fleet, it would have been catastrophe in the UK, Spain, etc. What did happen was horrible enough.
That's less than 10% of the homes in just that area, for optimistically 10 hours. What will it cost? Who's paying for it? Will it drive up electricity prices?
Only if you factor in the government putting their heavy thumb on the scales of energy production. 'Renewable' energy is allowed to game the system, being paid for all power produced, even when not needed, and generating renewable credits at the same time. The dirty secret which has become more well known recently is that 'renewable' energy cannot provide the needed base load for modern society.
The EUs 'renewable energy' facade was shown to rely entirely on Russian gas.
"Building New Renewables Is Cheaper Than Burning Fossil Fuels:
It’s now cheaper to build and operate new large-scale wind or solar plants in nearly half the world than it would be to run an existing coal or gas-fired power plant."
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-06-23/building-new-renewables-cheaper-than-running-fossil-fuel-plants#xj4y7vzkg
The article is pay-walled, but you might get the idea from the title -? Maybe Bloomberg is wrong. Call them up! This article is over a year old.
I was not going to pay Bloomberg, but just from the 1 paragraph I could see:
- It said it was cheaper to build and operate solar or wind (in 50% of the world) then run gas plants. Building a plant does not generate energy, nor a base load of energy. These solar and wind farms are built on an optimistic estimate of power produced, and seldom produce the estimated energy.
- Building and operating costs are greatly influenced by government regulations and red tape, and many governments have been very easy and permissive for renewable energy installations, while saddling gas, coal and oil plants with carbon penalties. The red tape to build a new gas plant, I would guess, is suffocating in most 'climate crisis' crazy countries.
- I suspect the article just glosses over the problems with base load, waving their hand at battery storage as if that was a viable and imminent solution.
No, it's not. If it were, people wouldn't be getting ready to freeze to death in much of Germany and Poland this winter.
Does that include the cost for the acres and acres needed for solar farms, and the farmers they put out of business? To say nothing of the food they produced.
And a solar farm could be totally wiped out with one drone strike.
It is getting cheaper because Biden is purposely making fossil fuels outrageously expensive and rare.
Not because they ascend on their own merit.
We are years, maybe decades away from renewables replacing fossil fuels, and even then, there are millions of products we use daily that will require the use of these fossil fuels that climate nut cases want to eliminate all together,
MBS, in charge of Saudi Arabia, just voted OPEC+ reduce daily petroleum production by 2 million barrels/per day in an effort to boost prices. Biden publicly rebuked him, but since we're addicted to oil, there was little he could do except maybe limit arms sales to Saudi Arabia. Biden asked for more oil production, because lowering commodity prices is good for politics and Biden is a politician.
Wind/solar are cheaper tautologically, because they are renewable. They also offer free delivery - coal/oil must be mined, refined, shipped on trains, stuck into a furnace, and burned. A lot of people in that supply chain. Once solar panels are built, you only need one guy with a hard hat and a clipboard to check if the sun rises that morning. So if by merit you mean cheaper, we don't need wars in the Middle East to support them, we don't need to prop up shady dictators, or they're cleaner with less health issues as a result, then renewables win - its tautological? Is there no merit to these things?
You are correct on both counts: we are decades away from renewables taking over and yes, I want plastics, micro-plastics, and other petroleum byproducts to go away.
There's a whole helluva lot more involved than just installing solar panels and walking away. The distribution network needs to be upsized to handle increased electrical demand. A lot of mined copper involved there. And by your own definition, solar and wind aren't renewable. Solar panel production degrades steadily over a 20 year lifespan (on average) before they must be removed and replaced. The panels are too expensive and complicated to recycle, so they end up in landfills. That's just distribution. I could write a book about why electrification is a terrible idea on the user side, especially for heating.
Source: I'm a mechanical professional engineer and a certified energy manager. I.e. I've done the math.
“ except maybe limit arms sales to Saudi Arabia.”
I heard somewhere that holding back arms to a country until they do what you want is grounds for impeachment.
It worked before, let’s hope it works to get biden out.
Religious faith rather than reality. You have no idea what you are talking about.
Faking people out by making them think they destroyed a Van Gogh absolutely is new.
They pranked you. You got played.
I wouldn't be surprised if they're pro-nuclear.
Nobody faked anybody out. They are using 70 year old tactics and in effect are mocking those tactics. Because they are in no danger from the authorities. They act as if they are facing Bull Connor's police dogs or the firehose's of Selma.
“They pranked you. You got played.” Do you listen to yourself? You sound like an immature middle school kid. Are you sticking your tongue out with your thumbs in your ears while you type it? My 11 and 8 yo children are more mature.
Throwing stuff at priceless artwork is not “new,” it’s not creative, and it didn’t help their doomsday cult cause because if these people actually cared they’d dedicate their lives to helping invent actual solutions. There is nothing impressive about people “dedicating” their lives to acting like bratty children with supporters who sound like the middle schoolers sitting at the dumb kids table at the local public school.
The up-vote thing isn't working, so I want to second your comment.
This is play-acting by children who have been told what they should think and believe by feckless academics.
Keep it up. If you look around, you'll notice that a lot of people are already discussing supposed _solutions_ to the _problem_ . That by throwing soup at a revered painting. They won't get shot or even beaten. Pretty cheap activism, I'd say. "Rage away...."
I'd be surprised if they could spell "nuclear".
You do not do pranks with paintings by one of the best and most important painters who ever lived. They had no idea if any soup would get in or that no damage would be done. As someone mentioned, they also didn't care. This wasn't avant garde or theatrical activism, it was desecration and criminal. And I have read so many conversations about this and still haven't seen any discussion of their cause other than the consensus that they damaged that cause. No one has changed their stance because of this on climate change, but some people sympathetic to the cause are distancing themselves from this idiotic act.
"You do not do pranks with paintings by one of the best and most important painters who ever lived."
Well, that's exactly what they did.
There's no such thing as being "sympathetic to" a cause like wanting to prevent the annihilation of human civilization. Either you think we're on a trajectory to make the planet largely uninhabitable, or you don't, or you're agnostic. Lots of people who think the scientific consensus is likely correct are somewhat more radicalized as a result of the stunt.
Where do you live? A high school debate round? Humanity will certainly face challenges from climate change but I'm sorry "annihilation of human civilization" is not in the cards.
The living space where a few billion people inhabit will be underwater in a hundred years. It’s not the end of the world, but it’s not nothing either. And that is only the most obvious thing that will happen.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. That’s an extreme claim based on what I suspect is very dubious modeling.
As whoppers go, that was an El Monstro.
“ The living space where a few billion people inhabit will be underwater in a hundred years.”
I heard that before. About 20 years ago. And it was treated as an extreme catastrophe that warranted urgent attention then.
Oops, wrong again.
Yes, human civilization will be annihilated and the planet completely uninhabitable if/maybe/when the ocean rises a few centimeters, which obviously can be prevented if we all go back to living tin the 17th century.
Cool. I've been waiting for the return of the chamber pot & streets filled with excrement. We can view it as a contemporary hair shirt that we all have to wear so we can be absolved of our climate sins.
And drool buckets.
No, it's more like the oceans will continue to acidify and the food chain of the sea will unravel, while extreme weather disasters cascade on top of each other- even in the exalted Developed World- unless we give up our habit of requiring extra cherries on top of our hot fudge sundaes.
Hopefully that's enough of an exaggeration to counterbalance your hyperbole.
To return to my preference for understatement: the smug gloating of global climate heating scoffers rings more hollowly with every season that passes, with its accumulation of real-world evidence. Not really my problem, but the eventual negative effects on their probity and credibility- about any issue at all- are liable to be dramatic, and long-lasting.
...still waiting for an acceleration in sea-level rise. It's not happening.
The scientific consensus is paid-for and enforced by fascist big tech companies. The IPCC AR6 RCP 8.5 is the most disastrous prediction and, according to the IPCC, the most improbable scenario, and the scenario that we the people are expected to believe in, because, we are told, it is 'the consensus', and if we don't nod our heads, we are cancelled.
If the planet is on a trajectory to become largely uninhabitable, it is because there is no human force that can withstand your invincible ignorance.
This is why anyone who believes in the moon landing is a tool of big tech, plain and simple.
The messiah complex works overtime in the minds of "climate" activists..
The sheer hubris of imagining what is or is not good for "the planet" drives the delusion of believing we can "save the human race from imminent extinction" by destroying worldwide economies, impoverishing millions, and derailing decades of progress in lifting people out of starvation-level poverty using evil fossil fuels.
If you really believe that we must "save the planet" (read "save my carcass") you all need to find another way to go about it, at least a way different from what the Claus Schwabs of the world have planned for their messianic drive to save our souls . . . uh . . . I mean the planet.
Please please please tell us you live in Cambridge, Mass. PLEASE
The shit exploding from your brain is now gushing out your mouth. This was the same property – is – unimportant bullshit we had to sit through through BLM. Be aware our tolerance is thin, and retribution is coming.
So you can’t imagine winning politically without using violence?
When the waters rise, who’s gonna survive? Not you or your pathetic bobble head followers.
The water has been rising since the 1850's.
Glub, club, then fella. Hope you can swim.
Ah ok. And I supported Truckers protest. Now I'm ashamed of being in the same camp as Sevender.
Violence and the end of your tolerance is part of the program.
Athena, you credit the activists with having ensured their stunt would not harm the work they attacked in their “avant- garde act” of theatrical activism. Yet the accounts I have read of the related stunts suggest they not only haven’t done so, nor would they care.
Can you show me what you're talking about? Was it literally the same people?
In their statement they said Van Gogh was irrelevant and inconsequential and so are the Sunflowers
this wasn’t Avant Garde. they were attacking the painting because they see it’s value in dollars and cents. they know it’s priceless, they just don’t understand why...
I like Keith Richards definition of "avant garde." "They avant garde an idea."
I was hoping it was an "Andy Warhol meets VVG" moment, but I guess not.
"kind of an avant garde act of theatrical activism" Yes, we get that (yawn.)
Despite what the contemporary high-$$$ art Market might indicate to the contrary, there's more to Art than Transgression. Dada and Fluxus were avant-garde art movements. But while they were always assertive- sometimes boldly so- their performance stunts never involved outright crapping on the work of other artists. That sort of stunt isn't avant-garde; it's stale, unimaginative, nihilistic. And also ugly. It's bad optics. It's also politically incoherent: having as yet seen only the story headlines accompanying photos of the act, I still have no idea what sort of message the "activists" intended to send.
A skeptical critic might venture that the intent was to sabotage their own movement. Yes, that's really how inept it looks. A movement of would-be neo-Situationists might at least consider that if they're all about leveraging symbolism and subverting images, a Van Gogh painting was a spectacularly idiotic choice for their attack.
What right do we have to destroy a planet we don't own? committing ecological murder/suicide in the process.
Forget climate change, just look at all the other atrocious ways we foul and destroy our own nest.
By what right?
Your implication is that our mere existence is destroying the planet. You first on solving that problem..............
"Your implication is that our mere existence is destroying the planet"
--
No, not our mere existence...our unwise, destructive actions that are resulting in a massive ecological murder-suicide
Any specifics?
Mass extinctions
Deforestation
Oceans fished out
Loss of soil nutrition
Mountain tops raised by strip mining
Desertification
The list goes on and on and of course there's always climate change, which to at least to some extent we are making worse
Again, that's not exactly specific, and you offer zero specific solutions. Pick something to help fix and go fix it. Complaining about externalities accomplishes nothing.
A key to successful civil disobedience movements is the ability to clearly articulate specific and realistic goals and allow those goals to be subject to debate. Protesting to stop climate change is like protesting for happiness - it's an aspiration not a policy that can be implemented.
I'm somebody who used to be a solid believer that man was the cause of climate change. Obviously there is a lot of climate change happening, but now I'm more of the opinion that there are natural cycles and we are doing everything we can to make it worse.
I don't like fanaticism but ...
As someone who believes that we are destroying ourselves ecologically in a whole variety of ways, oceans fished out, loss of soil nutrition, deforestation, beautiful mountains destroyed by strip mining...
the list goes on and on.
As someone who in my own small way has been trying to get this message out to people for 40 years, it is very very clear that nobody listens unless it's really shoved right in their face. We would still be in Vietnam and black people would still be banned from lunch counters without the widespread protests and activism that made it change.
Protests like this may cause people to get angry, but it seems like that's the only thing that will get people's attention because rising cancer and autism rates and all kinds of other health problems don't seem to be getting their attention, not to mention all the problems associated with GMOs and EMFs. And let's not forget the mass extinctions going on at this moment.
Many human beings are basically very short-sighted, built to respond to the tiger in the jungle but not long term threats.
Really what we need is respect for nature and an understanding that we are part of the web of life. Even if we are the crown of creation of some people believe, we still need to treat the rest of creation in a wise and compassionate way, which we are not doing.
So, as distasteful as it is for me to see protests like this desecrating great art, I have to confess to having some sympathy for it because just continuing business as usual is just continuing down the road to destruction.
I disagree. People ignore the climate alarmists, even in our faces, on the basic grounds that absolutely nothing the climate alarmists propose will address any of those ecological concerns. Climate alarmists are some of the most ecologically destructive people in the west. We might be having a different discussion if these morons weren't ecologically destructive anti-human, anti-environment zealots, but they are, and they are drowning out important conversations about decreasing biodiversity and crap ton of environmentally destructive pollution.
The degradation of soil in global farmlands is a problem - solutions are found in everything from crop rotation to crushing up rocks and sprinkling to 100s of other solutions. The climate activists are shutting down the most advanced farms with the best soil management on Earth (see Denmark and New Zealand).
Let's see what these climate people promote:
Lead - ecologically destructive (solar panels)
Lithium mining - Ecologically destructive (batteries)
Windmills - Ecologically destructive
Neodymium mining - ecologically destructive
What do they hate:
Natural gas and nuclear!!
Hypocrites getting in people's faces is just annoying no matter what semantics gymnastics are used by the hypocrites to justify it.
Here's a beautiful example of polite activism. How much have you seen change as a result of this
https://youtu.be/9GorqroigqM
On the one hand I agree with you. A lot of climate activists are morons.
And.. in the larger sense, how do we realize that we are utterly dependent on our environment and that we can't just keep doing whatever we want and survive. We act like resources are infinite and the ability of the earth to transmute any poisons we put into it are infinite. That is functionally insane.
What would you think of somebody who on the one hand was pissing through a vast inheritance as fast as they could and on the other hand was systematically shitting in all parts of their house?
I met some economy professors, said to them that any economic system not based in physical reality is doomed to destruction. They had no answer.
Business as usual is slow suicide for all of us and maybe not as slow as we would wish.
They had no response because you were whining. Complaining about a problem without offering a solution is called whining.
I disagree with your assessment, moreover, you have yet to articulate any clear and realistic solutions, so I am not sure how any good comes from the complaining.
I am all for ecological conservation. I find hunting organizations and coastal habitat restoration groups have actual solutions to actual problems and the work they do actually improves the environment in the areas they focus. 4Ocean is a fun profitable twist on ocean clean up, the bracelets are neat and who doesn't like a good Yeti?
Laying down in the street or being a doomsayer doesn't accomplish anything. Climate activists yelling at me about my (brand new very efficient) SUV or blocking my route to get my kids from school, is not going to elicit any sympathy from anyone because there isn't a point to their complaining. There isn't a goal. It's just being a jerk to be a jerk.
You lament destruction then support destroying one of our species’ greatest contributions.
Have you considered not being retarded?
Never go full retard.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Y3FzVQi-R8
We’re just doing what humans do.
Point the finger at dear old “Mother Nature” if you insist on moralizing.
Just look at all the Coexisters who shit where they eat every time they chuck wrappers and cig butts out of their cars.
Keep on keeping on ncmom.
I could not agree more!
Complaints about their activities is exactly what the activists are working for. I suppose violence would be even better. At this stage, it doesn't matter what the content of the cause is. The idea is to make trouble which will then break up an apparent consensus. Take, for example, the Civil Rights movement. In the 1940s and '50s, practically all White people agreed with racist segregation, in practice if not in theory. I was there, and as a teenager I do not recall meeting more than a very few people -- 3 or 4 out of hundreds -- who were not overt, believing racists. Only a very small minority, even among non-Whites, were passionate enough and brave enough to do anything about it. The majority of White people (and many, many Black people) were very annoyed or even outraged about the activism. That proved to be useful because their annoyance and outrage _amplified_ the problem to the point where influential people like capitalists and bureaucrats began to ask, "Is there something we can do about this? Besides kill them all?" Now they name major highways after Martin Luther King and everyone gets pious and depressed when his name is mentioned. Official state-sanctioned racism is no more, and is against the law. Incredible, if you'd looked around in 1950.
Climate politics? Climate politics as it stood a few years ago had been neutralized. Even big corporations were getting in on it -- in the sense of using it for propaganda and sales. The only thing that really changed was the level of carbon in the atmosphere, which went up. So now you have some people who figured that out and are making trouble about it. As usual, they can't be heard in normal public discourse.
I don't know whether climate activism is scientifically right or wrong, but it is certain that unless something much more pressing comes along, your annoyance and anger will someday float to the top, and the capitalists and bureaucrats will be asking, "Is there something we can do about this? Besides kill them all?" So keep it up, I guess. Whatever it is, it's working, and, who knows, maybe something will be done.
This sort of action only informs me that the people involved are misinformed morons that have not bothered to study the issue that claim to support. This sort of thing might be used to bring attention to real injustice such as the Civil Rights movement of the early 60’s, but in this case all they’re doing is alienating the very people they need to support their cause.
Matt has his left wing cred to maintain so I understand why he hedges, but an honest person would point out a few things:
1. These idiots blocking roads and trying to destroy art are not just idealistic teenagers, they are also aging retired radical hypocrites who are indirectly funded and bailed out of jail by rich patrons who often got their wealth by exploiting the fucking natural resources that these radicals now claim they are trying to preserve
2. How do these protestors get to the protests? They don’t walk or ride bikes - they fucking drive! Sometimes in vans that pick them up from meeting places that they carpool to in cars. If only we had the time to block those cars - the hypocrisy of these groups is off the charts.
3. So let me get this straight…they have no interest in protesting US involvement in a war in Ukraine that could obliterate the entire earth if it continues to escalate…but sitting in the road to keep a mom in labor from getting safely to the hospital…no problem. They pick the issues to protest that their patrons tell them to protest…it’s despicable hypocrisy
4. They decide to protest in the only country that has actually reduced carbon emissions but China and India the leading polluters in the world zero protests. Why? Because the cowards know they are safe in US jails. If they travelled to China to protest they would never be seen again. Despicable radical hypocrites who are cowardly and self serving.
If they had any self respect they would all beg for forgiveness from everyone they inconvenienced or put at risk.
More on the money than Washington.
We're on the verge of WWIII and they're throwing soup at paintings. Oh well, I guess the climate "emergency" is a nice diversion for the kids and their followers.
It’s not a distraction. It’s the new Covid. Climate lockdowns are already being discussed. These fools are tools.
If some fascist asshats like those handling our puppet president Dementia Joe try to instigate anything like a "climate lockdown" the resistance will be so swift and violent that those daring to impose it will regret it.
I hope you're right, but the feckless rolling over for the Covid lock downs tells a different story.
"Climate change" is inchoate; it's like threatening someone with eternal damnation for not recycling or something. It has less weight than a disease that is supposed to be an immediate deadly threat. "Suffer now and indefinitely to 'save the planet'" won't fly.
We've been on the verge of WWIII for 75 years.
No. We weren't a couple years ago.
One of us is younger than the other.
I like the positive spin of “younger than” rather than “older than”.
I mean we are closer now than in the last three decades right? I mean we are in a proxy war with Russia after all.
I suspect they used tomato soup as a reference to Warhol and the sunflowers painting as a nod to Ukraine-sunflowers thing. They flat-out said they were protesting people freezing this winter from the energy crisis.
Both the nuclear apocalypse and the climate armageddon are important issues.
Nice semantics gymnastics. They threw soup at a priceless painting because they are spoiled children promoting polices of mass starvation and death. The climate alarmists are a doomsday cult that especially appeal to the not very bright but bored young adults.
They don’t get sympathy for their “cause” because they can’t articulate anything except demands that billions of other people’s lives get destroyed.
If they actually cared about the climate they’d dedicate their lives to solutions - inventing ways to improve agriculture, capture emissions, and produce energy. Anything to actually improve the world.
Doomsday cults don’t improve anything and sooner or later they wear themselves out.
They are throwing soup at a painting because it worked. Calling them bad names is putting icing on the cake. As for devoting their lives to solutions -- there is no way that an ordinary person can do that. The economic and political system they live in won't support it -- indeed, won't tolerate it. It can't because it's based on the accumulation of power and profit and anything that gets in the way will be wiped out.
It worked? What exactly did it accomplish?
Millions of people literally work every day in industries to make things better. Biosystems engineering, environmentalists, naturalists, habitat restoration companies, every engineer working towards products that are more efficient, and countless others. Maybe a public-school graduate in a democrat run city because math and science are prerequisites and they aren't taught there anymore, but in life it's never too late to stop complaining and get an education and do something positive rather than just whine endlessly and wait for a magical fairy to come solve human problems.
Going by the model of the Civil Rights movement: the actions of the activists annoy and anger people. Being angry is tiring. Eventually, if enough of the activists survive, they tire out their opponents, and possibly get something they want. Certainly being annoying is the first step.
If you think people are working to improve the conditions of life, you don't understand capitalism. The point of capitalism is to acquire power and money. The "conditions of life" are mostly resources you use up to do this.
I'm sure you've heard all this before so I won't persist.
The civil rights movement had specific and well-articulated achievable goals that most were happy to support - in no small part because those articulated goals didn't involve materially destroying countless lives and starving at least hundreds of millions of people to death as a predictable outcome. Same with truckers and suffrage and countless other movements. The climate activists only goals are lots of suffering and poverty in a hapless and ill-conceived attempt to undue the industrial revolution. If climate activists are so opposed to human consumption at all levels, and unable intellectually to contribute to actual solutions, they can first exact on themselves that which they seek for poor people around the globe.
Capitalism has lifted more people from poverty than any other economic system in the history of mankind ever. Claiming otherwise is pure propaganda. Prosperity leads to greater efficiency and more willingness to take care of the environment. Poverty drives emissions and pollution.
I have heard others try to claim what you have before, but it doesn't make it factually and objectively true. Objectively capitalism improves lives. There is inequality in every system, but the masses live best under free market capitalism and worst under central economic planning (aka socialism). As our free markets get destroyed by over regulation and government waste our opportunities for advancement and improvement go down.
I thought "egregores" were pan-like eunuchs bred and trained to pick up trash at Renaissance Fairs. No?
I'm gonna stick with the pan-like eunuchs, thank you very much.
I used to be pretty invested in the climate movement and certainly am concerned about the consequences posed by the issue, however I feel that they are going to be crushed in the next five years as they are pushing countries to choose between green/poor and carbon fueled/prospering.
Their moral posturing, with obvious elitist hypocrisy (a feature ubiquitous among all leftist pursuits it seems), will find little sympathy as times get hard.
Their inability to understand the difference between baseline power production and sporadic power production offered by renewables means they were too slow to recognize the need for nuclear power. It’s such a shame, because as they get more desperate to bring attention to this issue they will only turn off more people in their ever more extreme demonstrations.
It’s not simply that they’re advocating we sacrifice growth. They advocate that we sacrifice living human beings. All over the world there is a jihad going on against nitrogen fertilizer runoff. This is happening even in places like the Netherlands where runoff is more under control that it is almost anywhere else in the world. The reason is, without chemical nitrogen fertilizer. The planet cannot support more than 1/2 to 1/3 of its current population. Global leaders openly advocate genocide.
The nitrogen necessary for growing plants is supposed to come from animal bodies, but instead these same groups push for lab meat and treating the earth like a sandbox where they can just reroute water with no consequence and bulldozing forests for crops. They talk about forest fires but won't support managed burns. They want the power for their electric cars but don't want fossil fuels and won't go nuclear. The precious mineral mining is totes cool though!
You’re finished.
Alrighty.
No serious person advocates that we pull a Sri Lanka and just suddenly stop using chemical fertilizer. But look, the fact is that one day we won’t be able to make NPK from oil and then what? We currently allow a great deal of soil fertility to wash out to sea or sit uselessly in a landfill because we’d rather make it from oil.
You’re joking. Right? Or do you simply not follow the news? What do you think the Dutch farmers are protesting?
Thanks for prompting me to look more deeply into that. I think my point stands: The Dutch government mandated a 50% reduction in nitrogen emissions over a 10 year period. The Rajapaksa government decided to ban the import of chemical fertilizers over the course of a year. Even the most unwashed pinko commie environmental activist won’t defend that stupidity.
Heck, just a 50% reduction. So, heck, just a 50% reduction in crop yield. All we need is 4 billion folks to die off and we can reduce fertilizer use 50%.
I see, so if a doctor told you to loose 25% of your weight your solution would be to cut off one leg rather than make any lifestyle changes.
You think that a 50% reduction in nitrogen fertilizers means a 50% reduction in crop yield? Show your work. Citation needed here because it seems pretty unbelievable to me.
The UN and the WEF did.
You’re not remotely done looking. 
expect in Denmark and soon to be Canada they are cutting back. The United States has a senate which empowers agriculture areas which can prevent these police here, for now at least.
No, global leaders quietly discuss collapse and the attendant die-off that will inevitably result. Without forgetting where I am---no need to traffic in conspiracies.
God forbid we get nuclear. /s
That would be an actual solution. Doomsday cults and dramatic children, aka the climate alarmists pulling these stunts, don’t want solutions.
We don't get punished enough for our sins against Gaia if we move to nuclear power.
True, self flagellation is still the key to heaven.
"They." And "their." Of whom do you speak?
This is why they can never be honest about their position, which is to increase the cost of energy by many multiples, shortening lifespans across the globe and throwing billions into poverty and hunger.
Also this is a feature, not a bug, just one they realize is not popular (poverty, hunger, death).
There are plenty of ways to store power. It’s kind of amazing to me that you don’t know that.
If that’s the case then why can’t we store intermittent power at scale??? Where, specifically, will the minerals like lithium come from? How much gets mined currently and how much would it take to store wind power for an long windless winter????
[Beeezy handwave.]
I’m not sure how to take this comment. It offers little but arrogance.
I’m certainly aware of power storage options but also not aware of any solution capable of making up for baseline power. Hence why Germany, even after massive investment in renewable power sources, is having to rely on coal again with ng being in shorter supply.
This also side steps the cost. Before the Ukraine war the cost of electricity in germany was much more than nuclear France (double at least I believe). If we are adding storage to that then it would only drive the costs higher.
And finally there is the last issue of how clean “clean” energy sources when you consider their full impact throughout their lifespan. That’s more of a tangent however.
Nuclear is no doubt an important piece of a decarbonized future.
Full lifespan carbon impact of solar is zero if the panels are produced by solar power, which they will be quite soon.
There are dozens of solutions being funded by VC capital right now to investigate the storage problem. Nickle-hydrogen, iron-oxygen and other battery storage have the potential to solve the lithium problem. Pumping water at scale is already used worldwide. Just lifting large blocks and using kinetic energy shows promise. People are researching compressed air.
We have had two decades of almost unbelievable drops in the cost and increases in efficiency and production of solar. You are assuming that the era of innovation in solar and storage is over. Why would you believe that, especially since private industry is getting involved big time? It’s not government research dollars anymore, it’s making real money and the VCs are getting on the bandwagon.
https://www.greenbiz.com/article/big-money-flows-long-duration-energy-storage
I'm not against these technologies. I even have solar and battery technology at my house. But it's not scalable, it's a luxury, and certainly won't be scalable in the next five years (doesn't help that we will likely need China as almost all solar panels and batteries are produced there and we are quickly escalating a trade war with them).
While I admit that I haven't followed developments as closely lately, I used to watch the battery and storage space like a hawk. Eventually I got tired of of seeing a steady amount of headlines promising a new breakthrough and nothing actually coming from it. The reality is storage is incredibly hard. Once you get to a higher density you quickly find that it can only tolerate a couple of discharges. Once you solve the discharge issue you find that it no longer has the density, or it's unstable under impact. Even if you have somehow solved for both of those conditions the biggest hurdle of all presents itself in being able to scale up and mass produce (nobody considers this but it's the hardest part of any hardware effort, more so in storage technology). So much of the hype announcements are done to boost investor interest and appeal or for some professor justifying their generous NIH funding. You quickly learn that any lab breakthrough is just that, a lab breakthrough, that has little relevance to producing an actual working product that could be used in the real world. Also, kinetic energy, as fun as it is to see enterprising YouTubers play with it, is way too inefficient outside of a couple of special cases.
As touched on above so much of our solar growth has come from China essentially subsidizing it. If it's produced in China then you can be sure it's produced using coal too. There is also concerns about labor camps being used in their production.
I'm not against this technology in principle but to decarbonize on scale we only have one solution: nuclear. This is especially true if you support the transition to electric vehicles which will require far more power generation than our current Grid can supply and handle.
And China doesn't need us as much as they used to if they keep trading with Africa while we keep fucking it up.
Most of us only know a unipolar world and we are quite likely about to enter a bipolar world. I think we are going to realize how much prosperity in the US was derived by being on top of that world order. The cost of energy is one of the most crucial factors in predicting prosperity and given the changing global conditions we own it to the next generation to keep costs as low as possible (and obviously I would also like to see us produce less carbon in our production of that energy, hence the need for nuclear).
"Full lifespan carbon impact of solar is zero if the panels are produced by solar power, which they will be quite soon"
ARE YOU KIDDING ME.
Also compressing air requires the same energy at minimum to compress that it releases. This is insanity. This is high school physics, conservation of energy. JFC, are you just a troll?
Did i claim that energy storage solutions have 100% efficiency? Of course they don’t.
Even today, solar power emits 2-4% of the carbon per kwh than coal. How much lower does it need to be before you admit that it is advantageous.
So far, I have heavily annotated and sourced my claims while you have contributed nothing but assertion.
And *I* am the troll. My work here is done. Go do some of your own research.
At no point have I advocated for coal as that is limited, hard to get, has a lot of toxic byproduct an requires extreme landscape destruction to get. Much like the minerals used in all solar technology.
I didn't know you needed to contribute sources for the base laws of thermodynamics. May I suggest your local high school library?
so where not actually storing on a mass scale yet?
The answer is no, we're not.
Depends on what you mean by mass scale:
"In 2021, the U.S. had 43 operating pumped hydro plants with a total generating capacity of about 22 gigawatts and an energy storage capacity of 553 gigawatt-hours. They make up 93% of utility-scale storage in the country. Globally, pumped hydro’s share of energy storage is even higher – about 99% of energy storage volume."
https://theconversation.com/batteries-get-hyped-but-pumped-hydro-provides-the-vast-majority-of-long-term-energy-storage-essential-for-renewable-power-heres-how-it-works-174446
Pumped hydro can only be built where the landscape allows it. You need two reservoirs to pump to and from.
Nothing works as great for a cause as making normal working people hate you because you cost them money or got them written up at work!
They often have the support of the media and that has allowed them to get a way with a lot (this could would said of many leftist causes).
Next year we will have a recession, it could be the worst recession of our lifetime when you consider all the things that are going on (high inflation + high energy costs + high interest rates + massive government debt + war + supply chain issues). This stuff will be tolerated less and less. If people get hungry all bets are off.
Agreed on the hungry people. With 80% of people in urban areas, and like a third of the country as renters who pay nearly half the income to that single bill, it'll be a shit show with a fucked up food supply chain. Lol I was born in the 80s to a working class family and turned 18 around the dot com bubble and 9/11 the next year. My family members and I have worked for ~10+ large companies that closed after decades from the various bubbles and crashes smashing into the economy, including multinational financial firms (not as the bankers) collapsing under scandal. More than one had a company move to a southern state for profit reasons which is not just a thing most people do unless they're young with no families yet. Up until the year before covid I skated back and forth across the poverty line. I can't even imagine thinking life is a stable thing. The only stable employment for people in my SEC, in my lifetime, has been war.
Your experience is such a common one. I am around the same age but my siblings and I have managed to find some success but come from very poor roots with a lot of famine mentality (my Mom grew up in a large family, living on the farm but owning no land, in a three room house with no indoor plumbing). It's for this reason I've always tried to vote in the interests of the working class, but only seen it get worse in my lifetime. Sadly I am convinced that any real change to the benefit of the working class will only be possible through hard times (hard times like people going hungry on a scale we haven't seen in some time). Lets hope I'm full of it.
I honestly can't even imagine owning property let alone anything with useful land. I'm also pessimistic about what it takes to convince people to do things and also hope I'm wrong.
I'm sorry to hear that. Property ownership should be one of the foundational goals of our country. Not saying it's for everyone but I believe it's a pretty crucial way to get people to have buy-in to the longterm stability of the country (but let's be honest, few people actually own their own house or property, the bank does).
I'm pretty pessimistic too. We live in a time that echoes the "Brave New World", in which people are being conditioned to be "happy" as they lose power and liberty to an unelected oligarchy (I think in the end Huxley was more prescient than Orwell, but if I'm honest it's been a long time since I read either). This is why I think it will take actual hunger to get people to fight for real change, because social conditioning doesn't work as well when your most basic of needs aren't being met. Even then there is no guarantee of success or that the outcome will be better.
Hilariously, thanks to stupid internet things and dumb international laws, I can buy a square foot in Scotland and become landed gentry easier than I can buy a livable property in the US as a US citizen!
Edit: don't forget if you don't pay property tax on your property, even if you own it outright, it will be taken away. You never ever own property in the US.
Maybe they'll riot. Another amplification.
That's always been my feeling about that tactic.
Less intrusive tactics aren't getting the job done as, after at least the 35 years that I have been hearing about it, far too many people do not give a crap about climate change. And, to add insult to injury, enough of us remember The Coming Ice Age that was just before this. And a few people will remember enough other climate scares to roll their eyes at all of this.
The bottom line is really that not all of us are Mathusians. Which is what this comes down to.
My first recollection of the coming demise of the planet was predicted for the mid to late 1970s. Every time the deadline comes up, it gets moved up 5-years. When I thought that they should really be going with a longer lead time, like 20 years, I realized that the number had to be short enough for people to consider themselves almost immediately affected, otherwise it would be more difficult to rouse hysteria. First it was a population issue, as you note, then it switched to the Global Ice Age, then global warming, now climate change so it covers anything.
It goes back to Malthus. Further back than that but I can't write a book here. The enemies of humanity, those who want a dull, incurious herd of workers easy to cull when needed, required a philosophy. An explanation of why humans are a pestilence upon nature. As if we didn't arise and evolve amongst nature; as if we are aliens doing alien shit to the planet. These Mathusians are masters of FUD. Very little that they expouse as dire truth has any basis in fact. As you note, the story keeps changing. We have become so dumbed down with our 10 minute attention spans that most don't notice it.
If environmental types were serious about climate change they would support nuclear, they don’t which shows they don’t believe their own predictions
It comes down to hatred of humanity/self-hatred.
My favorite Ice Age Coming video. And Spock was The Science long back when Fauci was nothing more than a garden gnome.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQSBn50o_8M
Cant stop laughing at Spock!
My favorite Spock (at 35 seconds in):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBeBGdVJqZQ
OK, that is hysterical!
Remember this quite well. And in my youth I believed every bit of it.
“Normal channels are not working,” says one activist.
Translation: the process of democratic discourse has not led to me getting the result I'd like. So we've decided to inflict our obsessions on strangers and seriously inconvenience people by throwing a public tantrum to get our way.
I don't know about anyone else, but when I'm confronted with emotional blackmail—do what I say and think as I do or the world will end!—I'm more inclined to disagree just on principle.
These people need to put down the MSM crackpipe—the planet aint dyin, the planet has lived thru ice ages and volcano ages, and humans are an incredibly adaptable species. Also, there's what like 8 billion of us? Time for a pruning anyway!
Instead of saving the world save yourself (and your fam & friends), instead of healing the planet heal yourself.
The planet will still be here long after we're all forgotten.
"Also, there's what like 8 billion of us? Time for a pruning anyway!"
You're a sociopath. At least you're honest about it, I guess.
Athena you are naive
i wouldnt say sociopath, im far too lazy for malice, just unsentimental. more robinson jeffers than jeff dahmer.
That's still sociopathic.
Dahmer wasn't murdering out of malice. He was lonely and liked cuddling with the corpses. There isn't one word to describe his flavor of awful and crazy.
cmon, my comment was a prank, a kind of an avant-garde act of theatrical activism...
😄😄😄🎯
Needs more soup
Everyone is ok with some of us dying until they realize that they’re some of us.
I wonder Matt if you would be as relaxed about these tactics if they were utilized by pro gun rights people or those who believed the 2020 election was stolen. Does the perceived sympathy of the cause determine whether the action is justified or not? This is nonsense. These tactics are wrong regardless of who perpetrates it or what cause they are trying to raise "awareness" for. This is a layup. How is this so hard for you to understand?
Boom
Yes! Look at coverage of Truckers protest by TK and you'll see this plain and open!
There is a big difference - the truckers earned sympathy and support. That’s key to successful civil disobedience. Their well articulated demands were reasonable and imposed nothing on others, they were well informed, and they protested in a way explicitly permitted by the Canadian Charter rights. They also informed the public, on house arrest at the time, where they would be protesting.
The doomsday climate alarmists are not gaining public support. They can’t articulate solutions. Their demands involve the material destruction of billions of lives while not solving the supposed problem they are protesting for. They contribute nothing. They solve nothing. They can’t even live by the rules they demand from others.
With climate concerns, if these “activists” actually cared about the planet they could help invent solutions, dedicate their lives to habitat restoration or organic farming or emissions reductions or clean energy. Lots of people already do and they actually improve the world without stopping traffic or destroying artwork or wasting milk. The climate alarmists comes across as they are - too lazy and uneducated to actually help solve the problem........ it’s like a car jacker who swears he’s fighting inequality........... he can say that endlessly, maybe even believe it, but in the end, he’s still just a criminal stealing others people’s stuff.
I also sympathize with the truckers and believer they were treated appallingly by the Canadian government but I think equating the two is off base. The trucker protest was fundamentally about individual rights whereas the climate crisis, by its vary nature is collective. When more frequent droughts and stronger hurricanes destroy crops and industry it impacts society as a whole. The analogy of a carjacker is not accurate, it’s more like someone grabbing the wheel of a bus away from the driver because he believes, right or wrong, that the driver is going off a cliff. I don’t like these particular protestors or their tactics but I recognize that we need to take this shit seriously as a society. I’ve switched to supporting nuclear as I have learned more about renewables.
Taking the shit seriously neither implies nor compels "protests." In this case actual solutions, many of which already exist but are adamantly opposed by the "climate alarmists," would be far more productive. People who genuinely take the issue seriously learn about it, and those truly dedicated are in industries and careers pursuing and finding actual solutions.
I have lived in the woods over a year of my life and dedicated half my undergrad to environmental sciences. I was also an outdoor adventure guide for 3 summers in undergrad. To this day I don't just talk the talk but also walk the walk with my money and my choices on environmental concerns. Nothing irritates me more than climate alarmists and their pointless, cruel, idiotic, and immature antics. There is no more ecologically destructive force in the western world than "climate activists" who seem perfectly content to destroy the Earth not saving the climate. They are also far too lazy to be taken seriously - if they actually cared they's dedicate their lives to creating solutions not demanding "other people" starve to death. The climate alarmists are so stupid they don't even realize nothing is worse for the environment and emissions than poverty and scarcity.
The frustrating thing is that those who have real solutions receive no attention in the media. Reducing car dependency in the US would go a long way towards reducing emissions. A nationwide plan to make cities more walkable and build more public transportation should be adopted immediately. But that’s unsexy and it will take more than 4 years so no politician wants to touch it. Besides, GM might sell one less tire and we can’t have that.
No, it wouldn't. Additionally, Pro-scarcity ideology is not actually a solution.
Cities aren't building more public transportation because the same people pushing public transportation are pushing for defunding the police and other pro-criminal pro-crime policies in the name of "social justice." The cities aren't walkable for many reasons and again, crime is a huge one.
Solutions that work in reality are actual solutions. "Solutions" that are unworkable in reality are empty nonsense.
well if climate change was actually an emergency these protests would be better received.
Idiotic assholes. Run them over and make the world better
Just another reason to invest in four or all-wheel drive vehicles. I wonder if Elon plans to make that an option? I’d like to think I was environmentally friendly as I navigate over the protestors. Population control is another cause I’m interested in.
"Run them over"
Are you capable of making points without advocating murder?
Let’s just call it a very late term abortion; that’s all better now.
Maybe you can just run over their genitals and bill them for gender affirmation therapy.
That’s why it’s called “Trans-portation.”
So no then.
I would run you over.
I recommend you hold that decision until you see the actual protestor; some of these folk are pushing 400 lbs. and have numerous piercings. I’m not gonna replace tires or shocks unnecessarily.
These people too closely resemble the campus hysterics demanding safe spaces from micro aggressions and demanding protection from halloween costumes that we're all too familiar with. Thus, they will be dismissed. That old saying about picking your battles comes to mind here. At the same time, that self-defeating behavior is probably dwarfed by the private jet flying and ocean front mansion buying of the truly powerful people who claim that we must give up our way of life because the planet is about to erupt into a ball of fire or be subsumed by melting icebergs or whatever.
IMHO, on the issue of climate change or the environment, it is never effective. The disconnect between blocking traffic and getting legislative action to spend money on a problem that will hardly affect a country as wealthy as the US. They want us to bankrupt ourselves to slow the rise of temps some miniscule fraction of C while China/India continue to not only burn coal for power, but are accelerating their burning of coal for power.
Not to mention, their preferred solutions are going to leave Europe cold and hungry this winter. People are in no mood for juvenile BS right now.
Let me be a remind you that the abrupt, mandated switch to electric vehicles will require massive amounts of… coal. 
If there is an "abrupt, mandated" switch to electric vehicles 90% of the world's population will be automobile-less.
No it won’t. Solar will do the job nicely.
Solar can't do the job and will never do the job.
Solar MAY be able to do the job if all the land we use to grow FOOD, is instead used for solar. Be warm, but starve to death.
Solar requires an inordinate amount of land to effectively produce energy, and is so much more in danger of being demolished by every day events than what we have now.
Solar is already cheaper than natural gas and has been getting cheaper every year. Go read what Noah Smith has to say about this. Energy storage is getting better every year too.
https://twitter.com/natbullard/status/1572929504066273281?s=46&t=Afmb66bl11Q_IE7d3pe7iw
Solar is completely subsidized and is not competitive otherwise. Battery storage is not scalable. Right now, and in the near future, it can not cover more than a fraction of the grid for more than a few hours. To make it baseload, batteries would need to cover 100% of the power needed and at least for a few days.
https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth
“ Fossil fuels dominate the global power supply because until very recently electricity from fossil fuels was the cheapest. This has changed dramatically. In most places power from new renewables is now cheaper than new fossil fuels.”
You are living in the last decade. Solar cost has dropped 90% in a decade.
“ But renewable energy — especially solar — has become so stunningly cheap that it has started to become much more economical than fossil fuels in many areas and for many applications. It’s looking more and more like fossil fuels are industrial civilization’s “starter pack”, and that renewables are a more permanent foundation for society’s material wealth.
When you say this on social media, you’ll tend to get a lot of pushback. A number of people loudly and angrily claim that renewables will never be able to power our society, and are only competitive with heavy government subsidy. The arguments for this deeply misinformed position range from real but solvable issues to empty knee-jerk slogans and blatant scientific and economic misunderstandings. And they’re often paired with the assertion that only nuclear power can be the energy source of the future.
Out there in the real world, however, businesses and countries around the globe are building solar power for all they’re worth.”
There are hundreds of ways to store power that don’t involve batteries. And batteries are getting better every year.
Funny. So then why do you think coal consumption is up - on the rise for the first time in decades and responsible for greater percentage of global power than pre-pandemic? Why is wood burning up?
How is solar going to power fridges, much less cars, north of Virginia from October through April? Is all that toxic lead waste just an acceptable ecological cost for “the climate”? Are you suggesting Germans and New Yorkers depend on solar power? 😂
How will the cars get charged in the 15 hours a day the sun doesn’t shine in northern latitudes during winter? Wait, will lockdowns for “nonessential” travel save us from a “climate catastrophe” the same way lockdowns “saved” us from Covid? 😂😂😂
What if it’s cloudy? How do you produce batteries that can store intermittent power in cold weather when the batteries degrade so much faster in cold weather creating useful lives of barely a decade? Do you only care about people in the south being able to survive?
You could power a windmill with all your hand waving. Meanwhile green paradise Germany will
be completely deindustralized next year.
The man in the pink shirt is correct. Wars produce mega pollution. Instead of protesting climate changes by blocking traffic & irritating others try marching for global Peace & ending forever wars. Many instigated by america.
Ironically the Greens are the biggest warmongers in Europe. ESG imperialism.
Pyganic is the new Zyklon-B.
My question for these people is always, why not start at the top? I think most people - like me - really fucking hate it when they accidentally (or intentionally?) make ordinary working slobs lives more miserable than they already are.
So for example, in the case of blocking a Georgetown intersection, that to me seems like it's at least on the right track, but there's still going to be poor people in that area (serving the rich)
If they want to win hearts and minds, I think they need to be more careful about fucking up public property and disrupting the lives of people who actually work trying to get to work.
I think what they should do is disrupt the richest of the rich neighborhoods. Like get journo's to follow them as they vault over gates into the wealthiest of the wealthy neighborhoods. Fuck THOSE people's lives up. Make THOSE people's lives miserable. Make THOSE people afraid. Why are R Governors sending people on buses to Martha's Vineyard but these people aren't showing up there EVERY DAY? I saw the video where they disrupted a concert for rich assholes. I'm saying to protest on the streets in front of whichever homes they're currently living in.
I want someone from these organizations to answer that specific question. Why aren't they starting with the Wealthiest? I can't be the only one who wonders about this every time.
These are the children of the people who live in Martha's vineyard and they most assuredly support the same policies.
I don't disagree that there's a significant contingent of Trustafarrians in this group.
That would certainly be a case in point, because I'm sure the good people of Martha's Vinyard would have those people dragged off to jail faster than they got rid of the immigrants shipped in by DeSantis. Faster than Trudeau shut down Truckers bank accounts. Faster than the Jan 6 protesters got thrown in the DC gulag. If you "protest" by harming or inconveniencing regular people, there are likely to be no consequences. If you actually take it up with the people responsible, they will come down on you like a bag of hammers. Most of these "protests" are either theater or actually serve the interests of the state.
That's what's on my mind where I'm going with this. They're avoiding the people who could really fuck their lives up (and would also get away with it). They're fucking with people who don't have as much power to fight back at them.
So what's the term for that, then? What's the term for someone who only picks on those that are unable or unwilling to fight back when they're being pushed around? Hmm... what's the term I'm thinking of? Hmm... I think it starts with a "B-" and rhymes with "Gully." Can't quite get it clear in my mind...
So yeah, that's why I want them to answer this question. I want them to admit that for all their talk of putting themselves in "danger" and "courage" and "bravery" and "self-sacrifice" and "we do what it takes no matter what because it's too damn important" that they're still just attacking regular people well behind the lines.
The part where the leaders cautioned the women that they might be called worse names is all well and good, but if they were really courageous and fighting for lives then they'd risk death and injury instead of just being called a "cunt."
This is why - more and more - everyone hates these pompous asses.
spot on
Wow, you just nailed it
Maybe these traffic blockers and soup throwers can achieve what our political leaders could not… bringing the anti-abortion people and the anti-gun people together to reconsider making exceptions.
The cut of your jib ... I like it.
thats cold