This seems like an even less effective strategy than glueing yourself on the highway or throwing soup on museum pictures. Why would such an announcement by world leaders be anything but a lip service similar to all the previous “bla bla bla”?
I think effective Eco Activism would try to target key fossil fuel infrastructure like disrupting access roads to refineries or blocking pipelines (but obviously not by spilling their content into nature).
That would likely also get the attention of politicians very fast.
I feel like we are past the point where it makes sense to do publicity stunts to raise awareness of the general public. People know by now, and they either don’t care or feel helpless to change anything. Directly disrupting their daily lives by trying to shut down airports etc. is not going to change that, it is just going to make them angry and turn the anger towards the activists.
I agree. I’m personally not a big fan of XR due to how I’ve seen them hijack protests lead by Indigenous comrades and other reasons. All this does seem very vague and almost assumes that the state can be held accountable by just yelling at them enough which should be an apparent fallacy to any real “eco activist”.
We’re certainly beyond that point and yes, direct action would speak louder and be a more constructive use of time.
This appeared in Adbusters which is the same 'zine that helped bring about Occupy, a movement that is not without its flaws. At any rate, I wanted to share to see what everyone thinks about this letter and next steps for our movements.
Next steps? Hard to tell for me. We need to convince the climate change deniers/ignorants. Because we don’t need to convince people already on our side. (But maybe I’m wrong.) I think demonstrations, sit ins and occupations are not very helpful because they don’t persuade people, they rather make them hostile to us.
So I’d love to hear new ideas from “The Third Force”.
This seems like an even less effective strategy than glueing yourself on the highway or throwing soup on museum pictures. Why would such an announcement by world leaders be anything but a lip service similar to all the previous “bla bla bla”?
I think effective Eco Activism would try to target key fossil fuel infrastructure like disrupting access roads to refineries or blocking pipelines (but obviously not by spilling their content into nature).
That would likely also get the attention of politicians very fast.
I feel like we are past the point where it makes sense to do publicity stunts to raise awareness of the general public. People know by now, and they either don’t care or feel helpless to change anything. Directly disrupting their daily lives by trying to shut down airports etc. is not going to change that, it is just going to make them angry and turn the anger towards the activists.
I agree. I’m personally not a big fan of XR due to how I’ve seen them hijack protests lead by Indigenous comrades and other reasons. All this does seem very vague and almost assumes that the state can be held accountable by just yelling at them enough which should be an apparent fallacy to any real “eco activist”.
We’re certainly beyond that point and yes, direct action would speak louder and be a more constructive use of time.
This appeared in Adbusters which is the same 'zine that helped bring about Occupy, a movement that is not without its flaws. At any rate, I wanted to share to see what everyone thinks about this letter and next steps for our movements.
Next steps? Hard to tell for me. We need to convince the climate change deniers/ignorants. Because we don’t need to convince people already on our side. (But maybe I’m wrong.) I think demonstrations, sit ins and occupations are not very helpful because they don’t persuade people, they rather make them hostile to us. So I’d love to hear new ideas from “The Third Force”.
That webpage is not only about stunts and leaders’ promises.
XR UK thinks that there’s no more use in small street activism.
But I’m not sure how “The Third Force” is gonna succed against passive established people.