Some good stuff has been happening in the UK this week (for once) with a lot more coming in the next 10-14 days. Anyone involved with Extinction Rebellion or similar in US? Recently finished reading The Ministry for the Future a book by Kim Stanley Robinson (bookshop.org) How to Blow Up a Pipeline a book by Andreas Malm (bookshop.org) and am increasingly convinced about the need for non-violent direct action. You may have seen the protestors ziptie themselves to the goalposts in the soccer match as well. Just getting started and its going to piss a lot of people off, which is good!
I have a ton of resources on the science, the urgency of the climate crisis, and how to approach and have a conversation with denialists or skeptics if anyone wants. Specifically, this book is written for those people and can be downloaded as a free PDF. Title is A Gift for Conversation -- but the link was giving a warning so I removed it.
Safari and Chrome give me a warning for that link Will never condone violence for political causes BTW. Technology is on the way, just need to hold on a little longer. Environmentalists need to embrace nuclear to carry us another 30 years until solar, wind, and fusion become a scaled reality.
ahh will try and fix the link. nothing about this is a political cause, but there certainly have been attempts to paint it as one -- and i think "violence" has a lot of meanings that need some clarity around social movements. If you define violence as physical force against a person, I totally agree. property? not so much. totally agree on nuclear.
Yeah wasn’t taking that from anything you said, but the abstract of the second book you posted reads as follows: “Offering a counter-history of how mass popular change has occurred, from the democratic revolutions overthrowing dictators to the movement against apartheid and for women's suffrage, Malm argues that the strategic acceptance of property destruction and violence has been the only route for revolutionary change.”
I think there's a pretty good argument to be made for the radical flank effect, e.g. with Malcolm X in the Civil Rights movement as well as elements of Mandela's efforts in South Africa, that is on the fringes and makes the other 99.9% of the movement more palatable and agreeable. The book shares some good examples. While I'm not endorsing the book fully without reservation, I think it's worth grappling with some of the ideas of what more aggressive tactics would look like. IMO, the title of the book is "clickbait" and intended to be incendiary as there are certainly no instructions on how to blow up a pipeline, but more an exploration of 'why might it be a good idea to blow up a pipeline' , which isn't quite as catchy.
Yep common negotiation tactic, move the conversation way further than you actually want to go. I share your concern re: the environment. What frustrates the most is that we're all screaming at each other when the solution is quite frankly right in front of us. More nuclear, now. We can reduce fossil fuel dependence, reduce emissions with this one simple trick - reducing consumption of energy / capping capacity which seems to be the preference for progressives is orders of magnitude more difficult. Reducing fossil fuel dependence also has the dual benefit of reducing the influence of bad actors on the world stage (Russia, Saudi Arabia). Mind blowing to see Germany outsource its energy security and independence to a 12 year old Swedish girl, they are shutting down nuclear and increasing their reliance on Russia. Craziness
Destroying the planet, which makes refugees of millions and will have a death toll, only to enrich yourself is violence. Responding in kind gets the finger wag though.
If you destroy my home and threaten my family, what's an appropriate way to respond? I find people who have this take are people who don't find themselves in the line of fire.
Fully endorse Gen Z climate activists going to Black-Panthers-in-1970s level extremes for change. We need it
the severity and urgency of the situation that we are in is that it can't be one simple trick, whatever trick is yours or my personal favorite solution. it needs to be a full effort on as many solutions as possible as quickly as possible -- nuclear, other renewables, reduced supply, reduced demand, all of them. Totally agree on reducing fossil dependence reducing the influence of bad actors, which I wish world leaders would emphasize more when talking energy and war right now. I'm not sure we're all screaming at each other. we're all screaming at the greed and short-sightedness of large corporations and governments. the fox news machine has just convinced Rs that Brandon and the libs are the enemy and the cause of the valid concerns over gas prices, rather than the oil execs and everyone else that is extracting and exploiting the future of the planet for profit. And the Dems, who the majority of are basically yassified Republicans w/r/t climate, aren't solving the issue either. Your Thunberg/Russia/Germany jab feels like it's from nothing of substance-- unless I'm missing something (not fully up to speed with Germany, tbh). -- Germany froze the Nord Stream 2 project as well as moved up their 100% renewable goal 15 years in response to Russia (Germany Brings Forward Goal of 100% Renewable Power to 2035 - Bloomberg)?
Personally, I think a lot of the world suffers from energy naivety. We need relatively cheap fossil fuels in the effort to transition to clean renewable energy. If we have an inadequate supply of fossil fuels it will threaten the transition to clean energy as well as have knock on effects such as food supply security issues for many different countries. (We are starting to see this now) I’m very pro nuclear and although this current energy crisis is going to create a lot of pain, I’m starting to see positive signs come out of it like the transition back into the acceptance of nuclear plants. (It really shouldn’t be a question at this point)
This sort of stuff drives me nuts, similar situation playing out in New England where they burn fuel oil and get their natural gas from Trinidad and Tobago instead of Appalachian gas fields right next door and NIMBY-ism blocking the installation of hydro transmission lines from Quebec. Can’t even get the common sense stuff done.