Some climate activists have started defacing cultural icons. Many of these stunts were symbolic, since, for example, the glass on Mona Lisa protected her from the Food Response protesters who were throwing tomato soup. But that seems as unproductive as an environmental action aimed at calling into question the rebels’ good faith. What exactly does great art made hundreds of years ago have to do with environmental degradation? If you want to send a more relevant message that will still make headlines, how about stopping the traffic? The message could be that we will soon no longer be able to afford a car due to resource costs and climate impact, and that users must adapt to a future in which our commute, now routine, will be rare and expensive. I’m no expert, but you’d think it would be helpful to tie the event (as it was called in the 60s) to the message, and draw attention to future bad outcomes and what ‘they will mean to ordinary people.
Instead, some of these protesters are engaging in an escalation of exploits. IM Doc sent out this tweet today:
How to lose friends and not be able to influence anyone. Stonehenge. For what? https://t.co/BsKtGFs67Z
–Mark Seddon (@MarkSeddon1962) June 19, 2024
More details from the Sydney Morning Herald, courtesy of Reverend Kev:
Two climate protesters who sprayed orange paint on the ancient Stonehenge monument in southern England were arrested on Wednesday after two passers-by intervened to stop them.
The incident happened just a day before thousands of people were expected to gather at the approximately 4,500-year-old stone circle to celebrate the summer solstice – the longest day of the year in the ‘northern hemisphere.
English Heritage, which manages the site, said it was “extremely upsetting” and that conservationists were investigating the damage. Just Stop Oil said the paint was made from corn starch and would dissolve in rain.
A video posted by the group showed a man identified as Rajan Naidu, 73, releasing an orange mist from a fire extinguisher-style paint sprayer onto one of the vertical stones.
As voices were heard shouting ‘stop’, a person wearing a cap and raincoat ran and grabbed Naidu’s arm and tried to pull him away from the monument. A man in a blue shirt joined us and moved the paint sprayer away.
The second protester, identified as Niamh Lynch, 21, managed to throw three stones before the first passerby wearing the hat stopped her…
Just Stop Oil is one of several environmental groups in Europe that have received attention – and backlash – for disrupting sporting events, splashing paint and food on famous works of art and interrupting traffic to draw attention to global warming.
The group said it acted in response to the Labor Party’s recent election platform. Labor has said that if it wins the July 4 election it will not grant new licenses for oil and gas exploration. Just Stop Oil supports the moratorium but says it’s not enough.
Now, this type of action is not as blatantly retrograde as that of the (almost certainly funded) protesters in Georgia who opposed a pre-transparency law that would require U.S. levels of disclosure of foreign donations to NGOs…trying to present themselves as pro-democracy. What they are defending is interference from the United States and the European Union.
But alienating the public from your cause (and not showing countervailing force, as unions do in general strikes) is so blatantly stupid that it raises questions about what’s really going on. From the GM via email:
One has to wonder if these are not organized on purpose to completely discredit any concerns about climate change. Just make it as ridiculous and obnoxious as possible so that people are most upset about the idea that there is a real problem.
It always seemed to me that in the West “the left” was destroyed precisely as a result of such a deliberate plan, by associating it with the various follies of gender and race studies, which had two effects very “beneficial”: firstly, it diverted attention. real issues that people were concerned about in the past, and secondly, it totally discredited “the left” in the eyes of the general population.
This plan was remarkably successful and well executed, if indeed it was a deliberate plan. But why wouldn’t it be?
It should never be forgotten that during the Cold War the tactics of the two sides were largely similar, because similar practical necessities and situational factors tend to lead to convergent evolution. The CIA was smuggling cocaine out of Latin America and the KGB was smuggling heroin out of the Middle East, that sort of thing. And we know that most of the intellectuals were completely controlled by Eastern Bloc agencies, but that’s because the archives were open there. They have never been open in the same way in the West. We must therefore wonder if the same programs were not in place there too.
It wouldn’t be the same, of course, because the communists didn’t really need to do much ideological manipulation (the ideology was official and unchangeable, and there was no real public debate anyway , so there was no need for a public debate). consciousness is shaped through public intellectuals and universities), but the main point – that intellectuals were directly controlled – is most likely true on both sides. And it’s not at all necessary for them to all be puppets attached to strings all the time, it would be much more subtle than that, of course.
So why not apply the same strategy when it comes to climate change.
Just when the crisis really begins to hit.
BTW, it’s really, really noticeable now. I’ve been working from home for a year, so I’ve been tending the garden at my former grandparents’ house, and what’s happening there is a very objective measure of how things have changed:
1) Last year it didn’t rain at all from the beginning of August to the beginning of November. This is not unusual in August, but extremely unusual in September and October. And we actually started running out of water in October, with restrictions imposed.
2) September was just another August in terms of temperatures, i.e. 30°C every day, then October was 25°C every day.
3) Normally, fresh vegetables would be finished between mid-September and the end of September, because the first frosts would come then and kill the plants. It’s been like this throughout the 20th century (I have direct memories from the early 1990s). Last year, the last fresh tomatoes were picked around November 10th. Only then did the frosts hit, but it was still 20-25°C a few days before. Completely absurd for our region.
4) There was barely a winter. This has been the norm for some time now – it started to get noticeably shorter around the year 2000, but now it’s hard to even call it winter. Two cold spells of a week each in December and January, otherwise it was 20-25°C around New Year’s, and the weather colder (but “cold” like 10°C, not -10°C like it should be) ended at the end of January. This for a place that was buried under half a meter of snow for months a few decades ago.
5) Then, it was even more visible this year: normally, the trees will be green and flowering after April 15th here. This year it happened around March 15th. Strawberry season runs from around May 20 to June 10, this year they were ready in early May. The cherries were ripe from May 10 to 15. Usually it’s an early June affair. The apricots are ready around July 1st, this year they all already fell from the trees a few days ago and were ready around June 10th. Tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, etc., you start picking July 1st at the earliest, but it was June 15th. Basically, everything shifted 15 to 20 days earlier.
6) This may sound great: who doesn’t want fresh vegetables in November? — but again, last year it didn’t rain for two months during the second major rainy season. The main rainy season is from May to June, and we had regular rains in May, but June was completely dry. Combine that with the disappearance of mountain snowpacks and you see where this is going in the long term.
It is true that there have always been year-to-year variations in temperatures and precipitation, but the growing seasons have remained largely constant regardless of this. When they change like this, it is an unmistakable sign of serious changes.
This is therefore a real problem: even as the effects of climate change become impossible to ignore, how can we make the population believe that nothing is happening?
Lambert agreed: “They must be cops.” Who else would be so stupid?
