Environmental march v direct action

Their aim is stop all new oil, gas and coal projects.

Which seems laudable on the face of it but is more of a red herring. What we need to do is to stop burning fossil fuels. Obviously this is hard to do if we don't extract them, but realistically we are going to continue to do this for some time. We absolutely must focus on not burning fossil fuels, this doesn't necessarily mean not extracting them.

Decarbonisation is massively complex but we need to be realistic about where we are at currently, and, what needs to be done to reach net zero by 2050.

The future is circularity.

https://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/topics/circular-economy-introduction/overview#:~:text=The%20circular%20economy%20is%20a,remanufacture%2C%20recycling%2C%20and%20composting.

No idea but I’m not sure that’s their aim is it?

@Simpsonssky do you really think that the actions of JSO are going change a single person's attitude to towards climate change?

If someone doesn't "get" the importance of sustainability generally or climate change more specifically by now they are either willfully (or perhaps blissfully) ignorant or pathologically bloody minded. Neither of which will be changed by the environmental damage being done by JSO.

May be that’s the point. If they just stood shouting or threw rose petals it wouldn’t be as attention grabbing? Maybe coloured cornflour is worse because it sticks a bit and looks shocking but won’t do any lasting damage. May be the juxtaposition is what makes it interesting to report on? I’ve no idea of the tactics but they don’t need credibility because they are not aiming to educate. They are merely sounding the alarm.

@brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr do you not see the symbolism of JSO deliberately polluting the environment? It completely undermines their credibility, and more importantly it undermines the credibility of the message they are trying, and failing, to send.

To those of us who spend our days advocating for and working towards real tangible progress on environmental sustainability and mitigation of climate change JSO are as bad as deniers

Indeed.

And JSO may well behave like children seeking attention. And just like in family therapy, the child acting out is often a sign that there is something not working in the system.

Coming up with constructive suggestions for households is not the point of this thread. There are many actions well documented elsewhere and I’m not gonna regurgitate them here.

Big Oil wilfully damages the environment for profit. It’s pure capitalism. Cutting corners during extraction to lower costs leads to pollution. And that’s before the product is combusted to release all that ancient sequestered additional GHG.

A tiny bit of cornstarch is incomparable.

@brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr nothing composts or bio degrades by itself. Initiators and accelerators are always required, there are always byproducts, many of which are not benign. Some byproducts might be beneficial in one environment but damaging in another. One thing for sure is that there was no naturally occurring orange died corn starch in that environment before JSO decided that their pollution is good.

I can think of absolutely no acceptable reason why JSO or big oil would deliberately damage the natural environment.

@Simpsonssky JSO definitely act like spoilt children.

Can either of you make one constructive, achievable, meaningful suggestion on how the UK, or local communities, or even households can accelerate the journey to net zero?

What do you think are the biggest challenges we face?

All of that is right, we all need to change our habits, the work of campaign groups and the dissemination of science by academics is all super important. It’s also been going on for decades.

JSO have a different role in my view. They are the fog horn. They are the loud child demanding attention. They are the siren. The work that you do, the various reports published, all the campaigns, marches, petitions, emails to MPs, all the individual changes are important but don’t make headlines.

And so people forget the grave danger we are in and Governments then get away with granting new oil extraction without much more than an eye roll and a tut. We should be angry about it. JSO are the physical representation of the fear and the anger we are all feeling but not voicing or ignoring. They have their place and their aim isn’t to win hearts and minds. It’s to be loud and disruptive and make waves to sound the alarm we all need to wake up to.

I don’t think you have a grip on the scale of ecological destruction being wrought on our planet. If you think a bit of biodegradable cornstarch (which composts itself) is “as bad” as (waves hand)….all of this, then frankly you’re completely unhinged. The Niger Delta has been poisoned to absolute fuck by Shell, all so people can have plastic bottles to use once then throw in the sea.

But yeah, a small volume of biodegradable cornstarch is worse. Mmmm. Are you paid by Shell / BP / Exxon ? Keep chugging on that oil teat.

You have no idea the impact it has, please don't pretend otherwise.

Crumbs for birds? Acid rain?

Only one thing is certain, and that's that no pollution is always going to do less damage than some pollution.

Oh, hang on. The aim of JSO is what exactly? Would it be to do less damage to the environment? Can you see how incredibly stupid stunts like this, and those that perpetrate and support them, appear to the very people you're trying to influence?

CFCs were banned in a wave of policies enacted from the late 1980s through to the early 2000s.

In the campaigning which happened in order to force those policy changes, there was direct action - particularly from Greenpeace which has a loooong history of staging dramatic stunts to put issues into the news agenda.

”From 1987 to 1990, Greenpeace continued to take action against multinational chemical companies and national and international lawmaking bodies. Most of these were theatrical and symbolic actions meant to grab the attention of the media in order to raise general public awareness.

Examples of these actions included putting a blue ribbon on a DuPont water tower in New Jersey, commending the company for producing the largest amount of CFCs; putting a huge pair of sunglasses on the Sydney Opera House in Australia during a protest, which represented the increased UV rays that can get through a weaker ozone and then cause serious health concerns for humans; and blocking the entrance to Environment Canada, a Canadian environmental agency, in Quebec with refrigerators that used CFCs.”

So of course part of the fight to ban CFCs was direct action for the same reasons JSO does it today - it has precedent for success.

the fact that so many of you believe that nobody knows about the environmental crisis says more about people than i actually want to know

I mean it's not as if we weren't worring back in the 70s when CFCs were banned...

I had no idea about FS but I did about Stonehenge. That’s really the point. No point them sounding an alarm in a soundproof room. It needs to loud enough to be heard or there is no point.

If Just Stop Oil had organised a few peaceful protests and the odd march, do you think any of us would have ever heard about them or what they were campaigning for? I doubt it unless they managed to get extraordinary numbers of people on one of their marches.

Similarly there is a long history of peaceful protest being completely ignored by those in authority. It took a riot to get rid of the Poll Tax.

It’s no more polluting than putting crumbs out for the birds.

Would that be top of the news / a huge discussion topic / make corporates rethink sponsorships / cause a visceral emotional response ?

It wouldn’t even feature in news any higher than the village facebook group and even there the fingers-in-ears deniers would compain about “virtue signalling”.

the kind of protest i'd love to see, for eg, would be picking up all the litter - wear a JSO tabard - or things like that. That would be a great start to respecting our environment.

@brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr the idea that deliberately polluting any environment and knowingly cause damage requiring any kind of intervention and remediation is beyond moronic. Justifying it further because it's not as bad as other types of pollution and damage is on another level again.

Positive action would improve the environment not damage it further.

ok @brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

What do you suggest we do? What are concrete actions we should all take, and what should people like JSO do?

I will wait and see what the people who really know what they're doing, re actual damage to Stonehenge (lichen and so on) say in a month or two and in a year or two.

we can't all be perfect, but we must all do what we can as @Singleandproud outlined, to reduce our impact.

No ancient monument has been “ruined” by orange cornstarch.

Stonehenge was “ruined” far more by acid rain.

All the things you said are great and we need to do all of those things. Additionally we need to put massive pressure on governments, corporations, the super-rich. Some of that pressure is exerted at the ballot box - but in this GE there is no major party making dramatically reducing fossil fuels top of the agenda. Some is exerted through peaceful protest, which barely makes the news. Some is exerted through direct action which does make the news and bring the topic on to the agenda. We need all of the above.

I care about the environment, I did a degree in environmental studies and work in an environmental organisation actively working to improve things.

Ruining ancient monuments and the unique flora and Fauna that exists there, causing traffic jams so cars idle, graffiting aircraft that then needs chemicals to remove the paint or mass transit to the city for a march is not useful in any case.

If you want change then work for it, bring in sustainable habits at home and work, model what you want to see, walk or use public transport, but locally sourced and in season food produce, don't go on holiday, don't buy cheap clothes or other products that are transported half way across the world, don't have a smart phone or other devices that require digging up valuable lithium, don't buy helium balloons etc etc. most people aren't I tested on doing those things, and even if they are does not contend with air traffic pollution from the hundreds of thousands of flights a day, or the emissions still from fossil fuels burnt around the world.

If you were in a crowded pool and there was a load of people constantly pissing and shitting in that pool and people were starting to get ill because of it, would you complain?

Or would you start shitting ?

They literally just attacked private jets.