To be utterly cynical about school strikes?

[Bloggerstobe]

Cousin's daughter has just announced she's beginning a school strike for climate change at her school. Great, it's wonderful that she's taking an interest in politics. Cousin is over the moon, and they have rang the local news to alert them to the strike.

Cousin's DD is taken to school and picked up every day by cousin, despite being nearly 17. She gets the bus no where, she is driven everywhere. She is being driven to the place she has organised to strike.

I don't blame her for taking the lifts. I would have at her age. But AIBU to think it's all just a gimmick and she doesn't give a toss about the climate, she just wants another day off school? Don't blame her for that, but I cannot bear my cousin's continuous bragging about how proud of her he is for going on strike.

I think you look a bit of a dick, if your organising/attending climate things if you don’t do your bit (I.e walk, cycle or use public transport instead of being car driven)

We have a self confessed “eco warrior” in my village 🙄 yet I’ve never seen anything pit out by them on recycling collection days, yet normal landfill rubbish bin is always overflowing on collection week. Why don’t they recycle?? They also drive a car each, yet the wife drives past the train station her dh parks at everyday they leave home at the same time every day & get home within minutes of each other so why doesn’t she drop him off? Weird

I’m keen to know how a blanket ban on private cars would work for those of us who live rurally? I need my car not only to take my children to school but also for my work in rural community nursing

Surely the main fault for this lies with your cousin, not her DD. She is the one driving the car. If she cared more about the environment she would refuse and not drive her DD. She is either a weak parent or she is very apathetic about the climate crisis herself.

She's 17, not 7. At 17 you're old enough to get married and have kids. She's old enough to make the decision for herself to turn down the offer of a lift and make her own carbon footprint-less way to school.

As for the mother, she might well be apathetic about the climate crisis. She's not the one striking though.

Surely the main fault for this lies with your cousin, not her DD. She is the one driving the car. If she cared more about the environment she would refuse and not drive her DD. She is either a weak parent or she is very apathetic about the climate crisis herself.

Cousin is quite apathetic but he is overjoyed that his DD is now a trailblazer and is excitedly telling everyone he meets. He very much wants to drive her everywhere. She is very much mollycoddled in some ways.

Would she have turned out at 9am on a Saturday? Absolutely 100% not. She also didn't turn out to the big match in our city last week, which is fine if she's been inspired by it afterwards, but I dare say it's the idea of the news interviewing her which is appealing.

I’m keen to know how a blanket ban on private cars would work for those of us who live rurally? I need my car not only to take my children to school but also for my work in rural community nursing

It would work badly for local communities. People living in them would have to move into more urban areas or find jobs they could access on foot or bus. This is the reason it won't happen. We all want to stop climate change, but the key things that would make a real difference would be too inconvenient to the people who are living on the planet at the moment.

Sorry, for rural communities.

It just wouldn’t be feasible for huge swathes of people to move to urban areas and quite frankly I don’t want to live in an urban area where there nothing to see but houses across the road and behind. Also elderly people, who are my main patient, aren’t just going to up and move and will still need nursing care at home and in fact nursing care at home is increasing to ease the burden of lack of hospital beds

It just wouldn’t be feasible for huge swathes of people to move to urban areas and quite frankly I don’t want to live in an urban area where there nothing to see but houses across the road and behind.

That's absolutely fair enough and basically the point I'm making. People don't want to implement the measures we realistically would have to implement to avoid climate change and the extinction of the species. People don't want climate change, but they don't want inconvenience more.

Everyone is a hypocrite and that’s ok. It’s better to have millions of imperfect hypocrites onboard than a couple of dozen perfectionists. As people who are priviledged enough to be able to make choices about our consumption and to choose our governments, we have a responsibility to make these choices count at least a little bit. Maybe some of this is virtue signalling fashionable bandwagon stuff but so what?

Maybe some of this is virtue signalling fashionable bandwagon stuff but so what?

Because it makes absolutely no difference other than irritating the life out of people who have to listen to it.