Environmental march v direct action

Peaceful protest, persistent campaigning and huge published scientific collaborations haven’t made enough difference over the last 40 decades. So what else is there?

If getting arrested wouldn’t damage my DC I’d be joining them in direct action. I am angry and so should we all be.

Climate chaos has already started, food is already harder to grow, people are already losing their homes to extreme fires and floods, climate related migration has started and climate related deaths and disease have already started to rise.

We are heading for tipping points, after which we may as well just accept our imminent demise. BUT there IS still time to lessen the worst effects and to prepare ourselves to an extent, but Governments are still hell bent on squeezing the last dollars out of extracting new fossil fuels.

Our Government is not holding our best interests in mind. It’s ignoring the science and putting us all in great danger, knowingly. Direct action is the only rational next step now all other peaceful forms of campaigning have been exhausted.

Sitting back and tutting and rolling our eyes isn’t going to help. Marches are needed to show the breadth of anger but that’s been done already, several times.

The Suffragettes were vilified to try and silence them too.

Neither.

The best thing for the planet is for humans to become extinct, the sooner the better. I'm not exactly relishing the idea of being there whilst it happens, but the planet will be just grand without us - yet they're obsessed with prolonging the agony for the planet as a whole with people infesting every corner.

I can’t think of a pressure group possibly since the suffragette movement that has managed so spectacularly to turn huge swathes of people who probably would have supported them, against them.

The tactics of the suffragettes set their movement back years and JSO are doing endless harm to the environmental movement and making “normal” people want nothing to do with the cause, because they don’t want to be associated in any way with the childish embarrassing and misguided actions of this group.

The trans rights movement is probably another group that has managed to campaign in a way that has made people want to give them fewer rights to what they were previously enjoying.

it’s a bizarre tactic and one I simply can’t understand.

You are asked every 5 years or so.

March. Write to your MP and local council. Write to the mayor. When they are up for reelection press them on environmental issues. Again and again.

That is direct action.
Join marches. Every one you can. Take a placard, make it pithy.

These groups never target the wealthy and powerful who are responsible for the issues in question. They always pick some bizarre pointless action which turns the average person against them. None of it makes sense

"I think it might be more effective to target our politicians to demand answers about what they’re doing about climate change and making it very clear that it’s simply not good enough. Losing votes will be the only thing that gets them acting. "

Right now politicians are losing votes for doing what an unfortunately significant proportion of the population think is too much. And without votes a politician can't do anything.

Direct action is useful when the democratic process is not available. The suffragettes for example literally had no democratic means available to them. The people fighting against apartheid in South Africa were violently excluded from the democratic process. They had no other option.

This is not that. We have an election going on RIGHT NOW. One of two parties will win. One of those sees net zero as woke nonsense and is associating itself with climate sceptics in bad faith in order to win votes. The other is going to invest money in tackling climate change as a basis for rebuilding the economy. I know the people spraying things orange think voting is beneath them but the rest of us can and should be engaging with this debate. We live in a democratic society and we have a civic responsibility to participate rather than sit back and wait for other people to fix all our problems.

I’m not sure that either will achieve much.

The Direct Action mob have just started to inconvenience and annoy people now. I don’t think the govt or big businesses give a shit about them disrupting people on the school run or chucking orange paint over everything. They’re a small group of people who are not winning many over to their cause.

The protest is good, it seems more sensible and might hopefully attract more attention. But the thing is, we all know about climate change. We all know we shouldn’t be flying or driving big cars, or eating meat, or using plastics. We know we need more nature, not less, etc. But we’re still not doing it.

I think it might be more effective to target our politicians to demand answers about what they’re doing about climate change and making it very clear that it’s simply not good enough. Losing votes will be the only thing that gets them acting. And getting into schools to educate our children (who, let’s be honest here, will be far more successful in guilt tripping their parents into being more ecologically aware that any lunatic or protestor will be).

That's the problem, and the biggest producers of carbon (China, US, India), need to address it.

I don't 100% agree with their actions, however I can understand the desperation. I have family who live abroad in Spain and Greece and the very real impact of drought and wildfires are an indication of a tipping point having been reached in climate change.
I think a multilevel response is needed, marches, protest, responsible consumers, driving a hybrid car, using public transport, turning the thermostat down, government and business need to listen and move too.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/dec/06/earth-on-verge-of-five-catastrophic-tipping-points-scientists-warn

Big business often care about paying their staff and providing a return for their investors too.

The activists would gain applause from me if they reduced their own carbon footprint first. Stay at home, become self sufficient by starting to grow their own food, organise the neighbourhood to produce in harmony. Don't get in cars etc and travel to other places to block roads, cause traffic jams (more carbon used), cause police etc to come out (more carbon used).

Ruining the unique moss of the stones and covering the stones with paint. Sorry I have no interest ever in this group.

I think the march is best, however I actually sympathise with Just Stop Oil. Their action on private jets was more appropriate, however they do generally look to raise as much awareness as possible whilst generally minimising damage.
The temperatures around the world right now show that we are absolutely in a climate crisis and the problem is that (Western) governments and corporations don't want to do enough of what is required. The problem is that many economies can't take the economic shock (see Liz Truss, pension funds in crisis, economy nearly fell over), of what is required to seriously address the issue. Big business almost always doesn't care.

Would it not be better for the government to follow the mandate of the electorate rather than listen to these noisy loons, be they marching or otherwise?