O/T:- Extinction Rebellion

[tommopie8]

My opinion - Right message, wrong way of going about it.

Assuming you're saying that it's wrong because it's disruptive? Well I'm sure countless letters to MPs have been roundly ignored and standing still outside protesting politely isn't likely to have any effect. Be interesting to know how they should go about it in order to get their voice heard?

I'm a hypocrite in the fact that I eat meat regularly, I drive in excess of 40000 miles in a diesel car for work a year and I use companies like Amazon due to convenience - yet I do genuinely fear for the environment in the next decade and after. I've got a 4 month old daughter and I'm worried what the world will be like when she's my age. Even since I was a child I have noticed seasons bleeding into each other more and more. Had an allotment and all you heard from the old chaps who'd been doing it for decades is that it seems to get worse and worse each year (loss of bees for pollination, unpredictable first/last frosts etc).

The company I work for is a buying arm on behalf of a Chinese paper manufacturer. We export tonnes of recycled cardboard every day. Between the dozen employees who drive around the country almost daily we probably clock up nearly half a million miles in cars a year between us. The material is picked up and driven to docks on HC containers, then shipped to Asia to a paper mill. All in the name of recycling.

There's so much 'greenwash' in the world where companies will do anything to look as if they're being environmental. Huge coffee chain announced last April a new scheme and price structure for recycling their paper cups and will look to be 'cup-neutral' by 2020. Problem is they didn't have a buyer for them and due to the low recoverable fibre content in them due to the glue and plastic used to waterproof the fibre I'm not sure they will.

Also see the documentary 'Dirty Business' for a look at how the UK government was subsidising companies through 'PERNS' for recycling when they were in effect just shipping plastic landfill to Poland.

[countygump]

I had no idea that Cold War Steve did videos as well.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1181902100902617089

The Andrew Neil interview that seriouspie mentioned.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1182081931804119040

[51Magpie]

This. Not sure about the methods as you attract more flies with sugar than vinegar but in regards to the issue then yes thank god someone is doing something where the issue of the environment and climate change is front and centre on news reports. Whether you believe it or not, I think you'd have to be pretty simple to not acknowledge that the effects of industrial waste and processes on the planet are detrimental. Of course the protesters are seriouspies worse nightmare with some having dreadlocks and not had a bath in days! Bloody lefties caring about the environment so animals, plant life and our human generations to come have a planet to live on and enjoy. They should just sell all that down the river for a quick buck instead like all the governments have done for years.

I agree with you on the 'doing something' bit, and the obviousness of the effects of humanity's activities (although 'detrimental' may be a bit of an understatement).

I'm not sure about blaming governments though... they're a reflection of us. If, in the last twenty years, a government of any stripe (left, right or centre) had started implementing the unpalatable things that are necessary for us to have a sustainable future WE, collectively, would have voted them out of office at the first opportunity. Goverments in democracies never do the right thing if that will lose them their grip on power. Totalitarian governments either insulate themselves from the problem until it overwhelms them and everyone else, otherwise they take forcible action against their citizens in terms of coercion and suppression.

[Old_pie]

This is such a brainless post it’s quite difficult to know where to start.

Everyone who protests against climate change has to give up their phone? Really? I think homelessness is bad but I don’t give my spare room up to a homeless person. I think people starving in Africa is bad but I don’t send the contents of my fridge to Africa every night. So I’m a stinking hypocrite.

These things are always about getting governments to act. And governments rarely act by being asked nicely.

Perhaps you'd help your thought processes if you'd listen and learn.

Anyway there was a R4 program discussing the issue of protests recently and whilst I can't quickly find that reference here's one for you:

In fact, new research on disruptive protest, conducted by Professor Abhinav Gupta in 2015, found that disruptive protests on their own aren't as effective at creating change on a broad scale as they were when combined with "evidence-based education." In other words, getting into the streets isn't necessarily the be-all-end-all; protestors need to do other work to convince the public and relevant organizations that their points are valid.

https://www.bustle.com/p/do-politica...anything-29952

And perhaps you could explain why power hungry status symbols containing masses of inane information are a good thing for the welfare of the planet, or maybe you've got things to learn about storage, manufacturing, mining, electronics, etc?

I don't respond to be shouted at or being disrupted. I don't care much about your or anyone else's opinion. Just give me the facts.

[Old_pie]

There are some people who still believe that climate change is fake. There are some who believe climate change is real, but question the precise extent to which human behaviour affects it. And there are some who believe climate change is real and that human behaviour is such a significant causal factor that our ability to change such behaviour is critical to our survival.

If you're a 'true' environmentalist, and if you are in the third category that believes human beings are effectively destroying the planet and ourselves, then there's a logical case to say that the quicker we hurry up and extinguish ourselves, the better it will actually be for the planet, because mother nature would actually recover from our damaging legacy at a surprisingly fast rate if we all disappeared.

Clearly that's a highly nihilistic view so far as the human race is concerned, but if we accept for the sake of argument that we are the critical factor in climate change, then being brutally honest it seems highly unlikely to me that the human race will ever show the collective willpower, agreement, co-ordination, selflessness and sacrifice on a worldwide scale to materially change its fate.

The reality could be that human beings are and were always destined to be a passing phase in the history of the planet, whether that's because we are inherently self-destructive, or because something out of our control will eventually seal our fate, like a meteor or whatever.

Maybe our biggest dilemma is that the massive collective ego of the human race cannot quite handle the concept that we are indeed finite. Let's face it, even as individuals, many of us try not to think about the fact that we'll die one day, some of us due to less than healthy lifestyles that we never completely managed to change. It ain't a nice thought, but it's true.

Ha ha - some brilliant comments on https://twitter.com/i/status/1181902100902617089, thanks Gumpie.

In the late 70's I spend a few years working in a 3rd world tropical country. Really on the whole the people needed little, good climate, abundant food, men fishing as men do with their spears by the river. A banana leaf had a thousand uses from shopping bags, cooking utensils, rain protection etc etc and 100% real recyclable (unless burnt). One didn't have to go far out of town to find the folk living in traditionally built villages using local materials. No power, no need for fuel other than cooking. A little bit further out and even "clothing" was from local natural materials.

I have to say I started to get uncomfortable at the technology and methods being introduced by us westerners who lived in the town with nice houses, air con, fridges, lights etc. I had invited a local village couple to visit and said the to the wife - surely you are happy where you are, you don't want to lose all that for this? Guess her reply. Since then a billion Chinese and more billions of others have decided they want what we in the UK have taken for granted for the best part of a century. Extinction Rebellion needs to address those people and BFP won't even have them giving up their smartphones.

If the outcome is near total extinction due to major catastrophic effects then as you say, nature will sort itself out even if we can't though some part of me believes that this is a cycle mankind has faced before. Still we've always got other planets to mess up.

[BigFatPie]

Perhaps you'd help your thought processes if you'd listen and learn.

Anyway there was a R4 program discussing the issue of protests recently and whilst I can't quickly find that reference here's one for you:



https://www.bustle.com/p/do-politica...anything-29952

And perhaps you could explain why power hungry status symbols containing masses of inane information are a good thing for the welfare of the planet, or maybe you've got things to learn about storage, manufacturing, mining, electronics, etc?

I don't respond to be shouted at or being disrupted. I don't care much about your or anyone else's opinion. Just give me the facts.

Thanks for the link. Questioning the value of street protest is a legitimate enquiry. Horses for courses and in some instances it will be, but there will be many occasions when it’s not, as your article explains.

I don’t think it’s legitimate to question the protesters values and motivation just because they happen to possess stuff or exhibit behaviour that seemingly contradicts the issue they’re protesting about. We’ve known about man made climate change for at least 40 years, but in that time we’ve all been the subject of billions of pounds worth of misinformation by the fossil fuel lobby. That’s turned it into a controversial issue when actually the science has been settled for years. As you say education is key to righting this wrong, but that’s in the hands of government rather than these protesters who imo have been successful in putting climate change at the front and centre of the news rather than the sidelines.

[tarquinbeech]

Some excellent responses on here where the general consensus appears to be not whether Climate Change is real or not (most people can see the changes around them and on the news), but what to do about it.

For me, I personally dislike the organised civil disobedience and disruption, but I can also see that governments are loath to act unless given a decent nudge, either physically by protesting or preferably in the ballot box (the problem IMO is that the Green Party are unelectable on a whole range of barmy ideas though their CC agenda is laudable)

Ideally what the World needs is a Black Swan event that shocks governments into action, but unfortunately it will probably mean loss of life, almost inevitably involving the poorest amongst us that don´t have the means of survival, nor the money.
Whole island chains will disappear gradually, but over hundreds of years not as a sudden, sharp shock. Cyclones and tornadoes will get stronger, but building codes will get tougher which will limit their effect. Floods will get more intense but our defenses are getting better......basically mankind will survive for a few thousand years yet as we learn to better survive our own mess.

The major crisis will come over food and drinking water. Whole areas of once-fertile land are becoming denuded and barren, with scientists scrambling to produce seeds and crops that can survive semi-drought conditions.
Some, like myself and several on here, will learn to grow carrots and onions, peppers and cabbage, potatoes and peas, at home in their gardens to offset the rising food prices in the shops....many unfortunately do not care, believing that mankind is invincible and that governments will come "riding to the rescue"
We will see!

[HaylePie]

The major crisis will come over food and drinking water. Whole areas of once-fertile land are becoming denuded and barren, with scientists scrambling to produce seeds and crops that can survive semi-drought conditions.

Scientists have been 'scrambling' for years Tarqs - any advances are years behind where they should be after projects were shut-down and abandoned due to protests about GM crops. I'd wager many of the same people involved in XR are those who would protest about GM crops. Time for a grown-up approach methinks.

As for your 'Black Swan' event - I think no snowfall at Aspen or Val d'Isèrre might focus the minds of the rich and powerful

[BigFatPie]

Scientists have been 'scrambling' for years Tarqs - any advances are years behind where they should be after projects were shut-down and abandoned due to protests about GM crops. I'd wager many of the same people involved in XR are those who would protest about GM crops. Time for a grown-up approach methinks.

As for your 'Black Swan' event - I think no snowfall at Aspen or Val d'Isèrre might focus the minds of the rich and powerful

Agreed. The Green movement can be very anti-science, which doesn’t do them or us any favours at all.

[Old_pie]

As you say education is key to righting this wrong, but that’s in the hands of government rather than these protesters who imo have been successful in putting climate change at the front and centre of the news rather than the sidelines.

I'd say they are putting their actions at the centre of news and doing nothing to clarify the climate change issues.

Did you look at the video I linked to?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmeXI550uio