- In short: Police have arrested and fined 72 climate activists [$385 each] for staging a protest in the middle of a Melbourne CBD intersection.
- Demonstrators from the group Extinction Rebellion say they have tried less-invasive forms of protest to make governments listen to their concerns, but they have not been heard.
- What’s next? The group is planning further disruptive action for March next year.
It was the fourth consecutive day of action by Extinction Rebellion demonstrators, culminating in a rally outside Flinders Street Station at the intersection of Flinders and Swanston streets.
The protesters are calling on the federal government to reduce carbon emissions. Many who attended the rally came prepared to be arrested, saying their actions were a last resort.
I hear you.
But I’ve come to agree with the opinion that there’s a rampant soft form of climate denialism that isn’t about the facts of climate change but the facts about what can and can’t be done.
We’ve kind of been lured into a “business as usual”, “gotta follow the process”, “work from within the system”, “I can only do my bit”, “there’s no point in rocking the boat too much” mentality.
All of these ideas make sense (to me at least) … until they don’t. And against the egotistical moralism of “well I’ve done my part … what have you done” liberalism, that was always a divide and conquer trap, we’re all going to look like fools in history just lie Nazi era Germans.
To quote three lines from you:
There’s something glaring missing here. What else should be done? And is it proportionate to the stakes?
This is the denialism we have and project. Maybe it’s the majority that need to be addressed in a logical fashion about what does and does not make sense. A lot can happen once the majority actually care enough about something.
20 or 30 years ago, fine, this might have made much more sense then. But as someone who’s thought similarly to you most of my life while also caring and even volunteering my time to organisations and certainly doing “my part”, I am not looking forward to the conversations I’d have have children and grandchildren down the line about why I didn’t do more.
I’m conflicted, as I do believe that action for the sake of the climate is morally correct, but that these actions aren’t accomplishing much of anything at this point.
Andreas Malm has done a few talks about XR, Just Stop Oil, or Insulate Brittain vs groups like Tyre Extinguishers, Ende Gelända, or Les Soulèvements de la Terre: his conclusion is that the former groups have done some amount of good with consciousness raising but at this point those who are going to be moved or sympathetic have been ‘activated’ and further nuisance activities alone will not advance the cause further and could instead harden people against the movement because it is action that is seemingly targeting ‘regular people’ and not the ones responsible for the situation we are in. He commends the groups for targeting banks and other institutions but doesn’t believe actions like blocking roads for the sake of doing so (obstruction of access to specific targets is another story) or throwing powder on a game advance the cause.
He goes on to say that arrests should never been seen as some kind of virtuous thing and instead should be seen as failures because it is taking people out of the movement and making their further contributions more difficult and potentially dangerous for their continued freedom.
I generally defend blocking roads as an act of protest, but I also understand the idea that there needs to be further escalation targeting the actual polluters because you will never turn all of the western public to your side.
Here are a couple of the talks I’m referring to, interesting to listen to the perspectives:
Panel discussion on potential future of the movement
Individual talk about where we stand today
Domestic terrorism it is then
In for a penny, in for a pound
There’s certainly a reason hardcore activists in the environmentalist and animal rights movements were targeted so heavily. I’m partial to the belief that it’s something way too many people might empathize with or even worse, copy. It’s also a pipeline into real leftism and anti-capitalism that can’t be countered with muh 100 gorgiollion dead from cummunism