If you worry about climate change but you disagree with Extinction Rebellion or Student Climate Strike protesters I can to some extent understand your dilemma. If you feel the disruption it causes creates fodder for the Murdoch Press and other corrupt mouthpieces of the resource industry (such as the Liberal Party) to shift the argument away from the issues and pretend they’re not paid science-denying traitors, I can see the logic in that argument. Certainly in recent weeks, even as series of climate science reports have confirmed the urgency of our impending crisis increases and a global movement calling for change has shown , our corporate media has run endless articles and discussion on why students should stay in school, how much disruption (don’t forget the faked photo of rubbish supposedly left after one such rally) these actions cause and whether any protester who isn’t vegan is a hypocrite (spoiler alert: they’re not this is a pithy and disingenuous way of ignoring the message that is only used by idiots or people appealing to idiots). But personally I’m not persuaded that this is good enough argument against direct protest action. After all, corporate media is always going to do this, regardless of how much material they have. Academics, activists and NGOs have spent decades trying politely to get the world to take the threat of climate change seriously yet here we are. That approach has had little impact on the vested interests of those in power. Protest movements can work when they capture the political zeitgeist because they force our politicians to respond. In fact this is one of the few ways those of us who are not in the top 1% can influence public policy.
On the other hand if you actually get more angry about the inconvenience caused by people giving up their time to fight for climate change than you get angry about the inconvenience (or should I say death and devastation) caused by the “once in a lifetime weather events” we now experience every year, then your selfishness is part of the problem. And yeah you should be angry. You think protesters aren’t? That’s why they’re there- it’s not fun. But your anger shouldn’t be directed at the delay some protesters might have caused you (and I see plenty of people who were completely unaffected by these protests who still sound strangely angry about them). You should be angry at the rapacious industries that threatens our entire planet, their corrupt political marionettes in the Liberal Party and the shills that defend them in corporate media. I save a particular disdain (and I use that word quite deliberately) for those ‘edgy’ trolls (if you are pretentious enough to call yourself a provocateur then you get double points) who think they make themselves look smart with patronising strawman arguments about protesters’ individual carbon footprints or lack of solutions (even though the solutions protesters are asking for are well known and obvious). Usually these self-caricatures can make this kind of misrepresentation of people asking for system-wide change and within minutes claim Australia is too small a country to make a difference by whining, “But what about China and India?” Perhaps the most pathetic forms of shooting the messenger are the ad hominem attacks against Greta Thunberg. Seriously, if you’re an adult who thinks a good use of your time is publicly attacking and seeking to misrepresent any 16 year-old kid, then you sound like a creep. When you target Ms Thunberg by sharing poorly-argued simplifications of her position and memes that target her personally, you just highlight the gulf in character between you and this 16-year old girl. Trust me, the comparison is not kind to you.
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