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Three days ago, my hometown Berlin witnessed an event (German news article) that combines several culture war flashpoints into an almost absurdist melange: a cyclist was driven over by a concrete mixer truck (who was at fault is unclear at the moment, initial statements by the police indicate that the cyclist fell over by her own and that the driver could not react in time, though he might still be at fault for driving too close to her), the driver, as he was leaving his vehicle to call for help, was attacked and wounded with a knife by an unknown and currently fugitive
homeless* person, resulting in him needing hospital care, and finally, to top it all off, the special emergency service vehicle purpose built for rescuing people stuck under heavy vehicles was hindered in its approach to the scene of the accident by a traffic jam caused by climate activists who had glued themselves to one of the main highways of the city, losing valuable time and forcing personnel that had made it to the scene to "improvise", in their own words. The woman has died of her injuries today, the driver will survive, as far as is known.It goes without saying that this story has something for everyone: car drivers vs bikers & new urbanists; crime, homelessness and decay of public spaces; climate activists vs people wanting to go about their day without disruption; and of course the extra comedic cherry on top that this happened in Berlin, notorious for incompetence and embarrassing gaffes.
In the days that followed, several notable people weighed in on social media. One particular take by one of the luminaries of German climate activism quickly made waves on social and legacy media for its display of a pretty cold-bloded pragmatism:
(image of the now deleted original)
Now, this guy in particular was always pretty radical, but until now this exact scenario was always waved away as something improbable that no activist of good conscience would allow to happen. As already mentioned, after the backlash he quickly deleted it and apologized, but his output since then has been to basically affirm the content of the tweet in a more polite tone, and the scene around him seems to agree AFAICT.
The last few months have seen an increase in highly visible stunts by climate activists, most notably a constant flow of people gluing themselves to the glass casings around famous paintings throughout Europe's museums. Highway blockades such as the one from this event are becoming a regular occurrence here in Berlin and other large German cities. It seems as though climate activism is becoming more and more serious. Up until now, reactions have been more annoyed than angry, with most people I talked to or saw posting on social media dismissing these activities as childish stunts. This and the rather unapologetic stance of the people involved might change things a bit. It remains to be seen if the reaction will be a decrease in happenings as activists are slapped down by prohibitive fines or a further radicalization. Demographically, the protestor seem to be a mixture of almost entirely urban and college-educated young people and a few younger Boomers and older Gen-Xers. I don't know if that's the stuff which refinery bombers or electricity-cable cutters are made of, but perhaps an event approaching significant eco-terrorism might be on the horizon.
* I remember reading something to this effect initially, but that seems to have been retracted or deleted. For now, nothing but the assailant's gender is confirmed.
A combination of bad UX decisions in the browser, OS, and website ate the comment I was drafting, so 5x more briefly - what do the climate change protest stunts actually accomplish? Governments, unrelated companies, and all sorts of startups are working on climate change. It's been a very important topic in the 'mainstream' for decades. Obviously - the climate protestors believe hundreds of millions will die if things continue as they are, and the capitalists are just pretending to solve it, doing too little too late to pacify and get money while not threatening their core business of destroying nature, etc. But more attention on climate change itself, as a topic, isn't gonna help much - everyone's heard of it, most people think it's bad. The obvious point against that is the george floyd protests or generally anti-racism protests recently - clearly everyone knows about racism, maybe they didn't "accomplish much" in a 'material conditions for black people' sense, but they succeeded on their own terms and were massive. But is there some societal opportunity like that for these climate protestors to latch onto today, and effect change or grow more? I'm not seeing it. What large government initiative or private enterprise will happen but wouldn't if 50 roads weren't blocked and 10 paintings weren't glued? Protests certainly can and sometimes do cause large changes, but here?
It'd be interesting to read a piece about what the inside of one of these groups looks like in the current_year, or even better a close look at their members' social media. I did a really basic search for 3min, there seem to be a bunch of different groups, one had a subreddit that isn't super active, something like r/collapse is only vaguely related but more active.
What are these "own terms" you're referring to? I can't really rate the 2020 protests as a success on any metric, and I don't think the organisers would claim to have achieved any of their stated goals, but I'm open to correction.
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Not sure how much help it'll be to you, but here's a page containing all the articles the author of the tweet I quoted published for the Rosa Luxemburg institute, which is institutionally and ideologically very close to the "Die Linke" ("The Left") party. Most of this material is German only, but if you switch to English a few have been translated, like this latest one from May 2020.
From what I can tell from reading a few articles, what he's saying here largely conforms with what I've seen elsewhere: dismissal of market based solutions (interestingly, in an article from 2015 carbon taxes are mentioned as a valid tool in tandem with more direct interventions like mandating the phase-out of coal, in the 2020 article however he advocates full on socialization of the means of production as a precondition for success), the need for faster and way more radical action right now (society waking up to the reality of climate change 10 years too alte is a common theme of the newer stuff) and a focus on climate justice aspects, especially with regards to Global North vs. Global South.
So in other words, he's not hoping for an initiative of current governments or private enterprise as anything more than a temporary thing, he wants a total transformation of society along broadly Marxist lines which would then be able to tackle climate change effectively and ethically (I guess, the things he mentions and the party association obviously imply that, but he doesn't mention Marx or communism by name). I'm sure this doesn't reflect on the entire movement, I'd say the median member is much more concerned about climate change than about climate justice, but among the leadership this line of thinking seems very common to me.
Kind of what I expected, I'll throw a few into google translate
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Beyond policy changes, disruptive protests impose direct and indirect costs which in turn change behavior. Imagine you own two cars, one ICE and one electric, and you saw social media posts of tires being slashed by activists in the central business district. This knowledge incentivizes you to take the electric car, and at the margin might make you dispose of the ICE sooner than you otherwise would. If enough car traffic is disrupted by protesters gluing them at intersections, some people just might work remotely more or even take the subway.
Are ICE tire slashings common though? I don't think that specifically is a factor because the slashing/ICE vehicle ratio is very low and that, depending on how it plays out, could just make some people dislike the 'green activists' and the cars. Similarly for car traffic disruption - blocking traffic has been a very common protest tactic for a century (just this week in brazil over elections), and compared to everyone using a car it isn't enough to encourage large-scale car use reduction i think
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A feeling of success and the ability to claim part of it, without having to actually do the hard work.
Even if that's true, you can't stop analysis there - why are they doing that, as opposed to more fruitful activity, how did the movement develop, how are they different from the clear successes (the sky isn't gray anymore, the rivers don't burn, lots of wildland protection, the pesticides are less poisonous) of the past environmental movement (and how did protests contribute to that?)
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