The idea that climate change protestors would target, of all things, Burning Man—then get removed by the local tribal sherrifs (not even Feds or state police), to me shows the hollowness of these “statements”.
Meanwhile, Norway just turned on a state-of-the-art offshore wind farm that negates the emissions of 100k cars, annually. That easily eclipses a big festival.
Climate change is not an “awareness” problem anymore. It’s an engineering problem.
@violetmadder agreed. Good point about the propaganda.
People are living climate change now; they don’t have to be told it’s happening. I trust protestors have the best intentions, but it is misguided at best.
I think some people feel powerless to solve it, so they resort to antics and call it “raising awareness” — then browbeat others as “part of the problem.”
I call it eco-survivor guilt. Bonus points if you’re white—white eco-survivor guilt is especially tone-deaf.
@Ed_Carley I am neither pro nor anti burning man. I don’t feel like either direction is a useful position to take.
I am certainly not in favor of police assault.
I am in favor of solutions that give meaningful results.
What are you in favor of?
@daanderson well, in that case, off shore wind in Norway doesn’t do anything to create meaningful results in the US.
Protest has a place. Protesting rich jerks burning carbon in the desert may not be your cup of tea, but it has a role. Flying around on private jets is incredibly harmful to the climate.
Waving away police violence because you don’t like the way some are protesting is not a meaningful solution either.
@Ed_Carley Agreed. Climate change is a global problem, however. Local changes have local reach. Let’s not handwaive away the good solutions other countries are pioneering just because they’re “not here”.
I tell my climate protesting friends to pick their targets. If they don’t, they risk irrelevance, like PETA at the Red Carpet, or like Greenpeace desecrating the Nazca lines to send a message to oil execs flying overhead (the execs did not care).
@Ed_Carley also, at no point did I hand waive the actions of the police away. I didn’t disregard them at all. I said the end result shows the hollowness of the protestor’s message.
Do you think I’m on the side of the police? Why?
It’s possible to ask for better messaging from those in our community. We should be allowed to critique ourselves.
I also think we should quickly disabuse ourselves of any superiority complex just because we’ve picked climate change as our “issue”.
Bob
D. A. Anderson (Daniel)
Violet Madder
Ed the climate guy