Just Stop Oil - I couldn't care less

[savannahowl]

Those protestors actually make me feel even less bothered by climate change. I genuinely don't give a shit anymore.

Have they managed to convince anyone?

There is no such thing as a clean fuel or energy source.

Not when they block motorways and stop people getting to hospital, emergency vehicles coming through, make people miss really significant events. I worry they will kill someone.

I totally agree

But so do really good documentaries, days set aside for a specific issue, celebrities talking about it etc. Other methods do exist and are not wontonly destructive.

@PuppiesLove there is the option to invest in cleaner energy and to use less of it. You sound like you are making a wonderful contribution to wildlife and your love of the natural world is evident in your posts. I wish there was some way for you not to have to feel so despondent and have a sense of hope in the face of the things you care so deeply about.

@cookiebee, JSO has been a single issue movement campaigning for the UK government to stop issuing new fossil fuel exploration licences. That has been their sole and clearly expressed aim. They've been telling the government to put an end to the issuing of new oil licences, not telling 'ordinary people' how to live their lives. There is a strong "Who do they think they are, coming here and telling us all how to live our lives!?" narrative around climate activism being spun in the media, cynically exploiting the fact that many who are too busy to fact-check will feel provoked by this hinting at 'lecturing' and 'hypocracy' and swallow it, hook line and sinker.

In my work, I have met environmental activists from many different groups over the years and most recently people from different demographics representing both Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil. I've been struck by precisely how committed they have been to living their values, and how, contrary to media spin, many are from regular backgrounds working in ordinary jobs and making sincere efforts at lessening their environmental impact.

We really must question whom it serves to paint climate activism in a light of insincerity, hypocricy and privilege. Why is it so juicy to imagine all protesters as pampered Portias who lack substance and integrity? Could it be that what is portrayed through our media is somewhat skewed and not actually representative? It makes fantastic click-bait after all, and conveniently allows us to think of those protesting climate issues as somehow 'other' than ourselves.

Ditto the flat earthers, creationism and much else, though at least those who question such things aren't burned at the stake any more

Instead they're left out of the funding queue in the colossal industry which "climate change" has become, and as we see too often money and other social pressures can be a spur which makes even the Gaderene swine look reticent

The interviews of the protesters had them stating that they just wanted the discussion to be taken into the political arena. Those now calling for what the protesters wanted, should have been brave enough to speak up at the time. The whole media was against the campaign even before it got extreme.

JSO has been a single issue movement campaigning for the UK government to stop issuing new fossil fuel exploration licences. That has been their sole and clearly expressed aim. They've been telling the government to put an end to the issuing of new oil licences, not telling 'ordinary people' how to live their lives

As I'm sure you're aware, @TheCentreCannotHold, JSO don't work like that.
As explained on their own website, it's a "non-hierarchical, decentralized organization with no formal leadership", made up of "autonomous blocs of activists who share resources but don't have formal leaders"

That being the case, "they" - as in an organisation - don't tell people anything; instead individual activists do, and some of us know far too many who do little but telling others how they should be living, even while doing the exact opposite themselves

Of course individual choices aren't going to stop the earth ending next week or whatever, but overall they really don't help the credibility of their cause

I've just been on another thread about 3G being switched off.

Instead of unhelpful and sometimes harmful stunts, why don't JSO campaign against wasteful practices.

I hate throwing things away. I'm not exactly a hoarder but I get a bit attached to stuff and also hate waste. Yet people are forced to buy new phones and computers - more often than many would like, because of security or software updates not being available on older models.

And now the switching off 3G. I have elderly relatives (from the generation that bought things to last - an attitude I inherited from them) who have non-smartphones that are 3G. Presumably they'll have to unnecessarily buy new phones. How wasteful.

Your assumption that it is possible to live a broadly similar lifestyle to what we have now, by having "clean fuels" - this is just magical thinking.

Some of it might be possible, but a lot of what is being pushed politically by the current environmental movement is very questionable in terms of it's actual environmental impacts, and just it's viability. Electric cars being a major one. The push to veganism which you see from many radical environmentalists which mainly shows they know nothing about sustainable agriculture.

Screaming at people who question this stuff is one of the main reason a lot of reasonable conservative commentators turned off on these issues. People on the left seem to have decided, at some kind of ideological level, that it must be possible to maintain a "modern" kind of lifestyle without carbon, through tech, and that questioning the actual nuts and bolts of this shows a lack of faith.

And if anyone brings up the practicalities of the economic impacts - crickets. How can you talk to people about approaches to problems under those circumstances? So you get whole countries trying to switch to EVs, at great cost, which will be a failure if not a disaster, including environmentally, and people who see it happening just stay quiet.

In the meantime these idiots go around stopping people going to work while clearly living tech based lives, often quite privileged ones, themselves. No one takes them seriously, and why would they?

I'm old enough to remember when the environmental movement was much more up front and realistic about the extent to which all people in the west would need to change their lifestyles to live within the means of the planet. And it wasn't just about carbon emissions either, they also thought about other kinds of environmental impacts.

And none of them are really talking about the part that is really difficult, which is how to make it work without sending the globalized economy of the rails. Which frankly no one knows how to do and why they keep tinkering with carbon credits and net zero and the rest.

JSO are absolutely the worst flag bearers for their cause - invariably left wing, pseudo-academics/students, who block ordinary people going about their everyday lives, whilst screaming
’emergency’. The police meanwhile standby.

They have done more harm for their cause than had they done absolutely nothing. Glad to see a few locked up.

Fucking morons - the lot of them.

And an aside, but people should really stop comparing science they think is irrefutable to Galileo.

Galileo had a theory that was not, at the time, accepted as the scientific consensus - his scientific peers were not in broad agreement, in part because his maths didn't work out, and there were questions outstanding about the observations he had made.

You could make a very strong argument that he was someone who was very much an individualist as a scientist rather than being willing to wait for the scientific consensus to emerge.

Eh? I would say that JSO definitely work like that.

Because, as you point out, I am aware.

I would have thought the more privileged side is the one who insist on driving everywhere, even when they live in a city which is where many protests happened. Plenty of people were able to get to work because they don't drive.

in your opinion

hth

A lot of people do not care about the future of their children and grandchildren. They seem to revel in the fact they will leave the world in a worse place for them.

There's also a large body of thought which considers the main driver to have been the work women did for the country in WWI, but naturally this doesn't suit the protesters

Had to smile at the "invariably left wing, pseudo-academics/students" though, @MoneyNeverSleeps. I used to know one of those, and admit I did think "Hang on a sec ..." when told he had not one but two PhDs in environmental science and management, though the fact he brought them into the conversation at every verse end should have been a giveaway

Turned out he'd bought them online ...

That made me snort out loud!

Wow, just wow.

I would have thought the more privileged side is the one who insist on driving everywhere, even when they live in a city which is where many protests happened.

Re privilege. The belief that everyone living in a city is able to walk, cycle, or use public transport is coming from a position of privilege.

Loads of elderly and disabled people (including disabled children) live in cities. As do their carers - who need to drive to do home visits or take them to appointments etc

Plenty of people were able to get to work because they don't drive.

Again, a privileged viewpoint. Many disabled people need to drive to get to work. That's one reason why there's the motability scheme (obviously it's not only for people to get to work - it's for people with mobility needs to get around full-stop, but for some it enables them to get to work).

And that viewpoint is not only a health privilege. It's also a wealth privilege. Eg. Many of the road blocking "protests" happened in London.

Loads of people have been forced out of London because of housing unaffordability - but still need to work there, and don't all live near good public transport, or might work nights eg. healthcare professionals in London hospitals.

They have adversely affected my thinking of the environment and now I am less likely to engage or support the discussions or work.
I think their actions have also disadvantaged them financially and I will support alternative causes instead of them.
I find them counter productive at best

Nowhere did i say everyone who lives in a city is able to walk cycle, use public transport, not everyone can, but the more that do, the freer the roads are for those that really need to drive

What?

People drive to work for all kinds of reasons, and they aren't always privileged.

In any case it's not like these kinds of protests don't affect public transport.

Not to mention that paintings don't have anything to do with any of it.

Indeed, if there was one act of violence that resulted in suffrage for British women (so long as they were over 30 and owned property), it wasn't Mary Leigh lobbing an axe at Asquith, it was Gavrilo Princip shooting Franz Ferdinand.

I care very much about the future of the planet,but the way these protesters have behaved has disgusted and annoyed me in equal measure. They have achieved precisely nothing,and most of them seem to get away with their actions.

Re privilege. The belief that everyone living in a city is able to walk, cycle, or use public transport is coming from a position of privilege
Loads of elderly and disabled people (including disabled children) live in cities. As do their carers - who need to drive to do home visits or take them to appointments etc

Just wanted to say thank you for that, @Windchimesandsong, since it cuts pretty close to home
I can't walk as well as I did after being run over and can no longer cycle at all (I never drove) and my disabled adult son does indeed have carers, so it's refreshing to find someone who actually thinks of these things

On a side note, when I sorted out housing for both myself as DS I made sure to pick places on well used bus routes, only for them to be discontinued - so I hope I'll be forgiven a hollow laugh at the endless insistence that folk should be using public transport instead of their cars

Edited to add I couldn't have put it better myself, @DdraigGoch