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Direct Action

killer b said:
sure, it's best to only carry out political actions at times when they're likely to cause minimum disruption or fuss.
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What do you think they will achieve, apart from pissing even more people off & losing support?

The answer is - bugger all.
 
I think their analysis - which is difficult to disagree with tbh - is that the situation is so urgent that building support is no longer a priority. When is there likely to be no longer everything going on at the moment, in the near future, after which you're happy for them to blockade the refineries?
 
Why block refineries at all if it has zero chance of forcing the government to agree to Extinction Rebellion’s immediate demand which is "to halt the fossil fuel economy NOW"?

Surely the only way to achieve that would be to launch a devastating bombing campaign?

Or maybe they haven't really thought through their demands or what they hope to achieve by these blockades?
 
platinumsage said:
Why block refineries at all if it has zero chance of forcing the government to agree to Extinction Rebellion’s immediate demand which is "to halt the fossil fuel economy NOW"?
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I think when most people make political demands, the headline slogans are often short of what they're actually hoping to achieve.
 
killer b said:
I think when most people make political demands, the headline slogans are often short of what they're actually hoping to achieve.
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Yeah I've read their detailed demands letter to the PM. I'd says they want to stop all fossil fuel investment immediately. They misquote the IEA but ignore any actual details such as this from the IEA's recent World Energy Outlook special report

"The environmental case for building new gas infrastructure is complex, as policy makers need to be wary about locking in gas-related emissions even as they reduce emissions from coal. If new gas infrastructure prevents the combustion of more polluting fuels, this can increase absolute emissions but reduce them relative to what they would have been. In some instances, new gas infrastructure may also deliver services that cannot be cost-effectively provided by low-carbon alternatives, such as peak winter heating, seasonal storage, or high-temperature heat for industry. For both gas and coal, a crucial variable is the availability and deployment of carbon capture, utlisation and storage technology. From a policy perspective, another key comparison is between the costs and feasibility of expanding the electricity grid versus the expansion of a gas grid that could eventually also deliver decarbonised gases (renewable methane or hydrogen) as well as providing benefits for energy security. Further detailed analysis of the role of gas infrastructure in energy transitions will be presented in the forthcoming World Energy Outlook 2019."

In short, their demands are facile, and we'd be worse off if the government accepted them.
 
killer b said:
Again, I'm sure there's zero expectation that their full demands will be met. But you know this.
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It's like going on strike demanding nothing less than a million pound payrise for all staff. An obvious joke that will actually make any sort of effective protest more difficult.

Their demand is an immediate halt to investment but their action is "we're going to do what you refuse to do. Stop the oil flow, and take the country with us".

How can anyone believe this group actually want to achieve anything in relation to combating climate change in the UK?
 
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Some men, faint-hearted, ever seek
Our programme to retouch,
And will insist, whene’er they speak
That we demand too much.
’Tis passing strange, yet I declare
Such statements give me mirth,
For our demands most moderate are,
We only want the earth.
 
platinumsage said:
It's like going on strike demanding nothing less than a million pound payrise for all staff. An obvious joke that will make actually make any sort of effective protest more difficult.

Their demand is an immediate halt to investment but their action is "we're going to do what you refuse to do. Stop the oil flow, and take the country with us".

How can anyone believe this group actually want to achieve anything in relation to combating climate change in the UK?
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would you support this action if their demands were more sensible and achievable?
 
killer b said:
would you support this action if their demands were more sensible and achievable?
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That’s looking at it backwards. Probably best for them to work out what their goals are, and then their demands should follow from that, and their actions follow from their demands.

They clearly haven’t done it that way, because their action “stop the oil flow now” doesn’t correspond with their demand “stop investment now” which doesn’t correspond with their goal “transition to net zero by 2025”.
 
killer b said:
this weird smirking twattery is pretty distasteful. I think most people involved with these protests are just desperate to avert an environmental catastrophe tbh. Fair play to them.
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Proving my point - if they're desperate I can accept them doing something counterproductive and say fair play for doing something to feel less desperate in themselves. However that doesn't mean they're actually doing anything that will improve the situation, and we'll be on here arguing that ambulances running out of diesel is a small price to pay for making the government aware of their demands.
 
platinumsage said:
Proving my point - if they're desperate I can accept them doing something counterproductive and say fair play for doing something to feel less desperate in themselves. However that doesn't mean they're actually doing anything that will improve the situation, and we'll be on here arguing that ambulances running out of diesel is a small price to pay for making the government aware of their demands.
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It only proves your point if it doesn't actually achieve anything. As with the vast majority of direct actions , what it achieves or doesn't isn't necessarily going to be clear straight away - I'm sure that next week, when these guys have been twatted by the cops and are sat in the cells feeling good about themselves, nothing will have immediately changed. That doesn't mean that nothing will have been achieved though.
 
Plenty of direct actions have immediate and obvious beneficial results. However the vast majority of direct actions don't have such a dreadful risk/reward ratio as these proposed blockades, in terms of the risk to their cause compared to the actual chance of achieving anything towards their demands.

If people aren't going to plan direct actions based on the effects those actions are likely to have, then I'm not going to support them. It's not weird smirky twattery it's just actually putting some thought into things instead of just assuming that doing "something" must be better than not doing it.
 
There's been upteen decades of less risky political actions, yet here we are teetering on the edge of doom. Over the edge and accelerating in fact. Perhaps it was all the previous actions which have done little to prevent the current situation were the ones that were about making people feel good rather than achieving a result.
 
killer b said:
There's been upteen decades of less risky political actions, yet here we are teetering on the edge of doom. Over the edge and accelerating in fact. Perhaps it was all the previous actions which have done little to prevent the current situation were the ones that were about making people feel good rather than achieving a result.
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Is direct action an effective response to every single aspect of every single issue? It works well where there are specific physical targets that are the subject of the protester's very specific aims - it probably helped the decision not to renew Kingsnorth power station for example, but is it really the best approach to more broader issues such as the speed with which we transition away from fossil fuels?
 
platinumsage said:
Is direct action an effective response to every single aspect of every single issue? It works well where there are specific physical targets that are the subject of the protester's aims - it probably helped the decision not to renew Kingsnorth power station for example, but is it really the best approach to more broader issues such as the speed with which we transition away from fossil fuels?
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We've had all those decades of trying other approaches, and they don't seem to have worked out so well. It's no longer possible to couch this in terms of some sort of collegiate debate about 'the speed with which we transition away from fossil fuels.'
 
killer b said:
We've had all those decades of trying other approaches, and they don't seem to have worked out so well. It's no longer possible to couch this in terms of some sort of collegiate debate about 'the speed with which we transition away from fossil fuels.'
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The decades of other approaches have worked. The government has comprehensive net zero plans. The protesters' argument is that we need a bit more of the same and more quickly.

Pretty sure this change below didn't come about mainly through direct action, but rather through the boring task of collegiate debates and consensus-building, although I'm sure the Drax and Kingsnorth direct action protests contributed to it:


Capture.JPG


Anyway I'll look forward to seeing how the proposed blockades contribute to anything at all in the short or long term and aren't counter-productive.
 
From the Extinction Rebellion UK facebook page

BREAKING: WEST LONDON OIL TERMINAL BLOCKED AGAIN
❗


At 4am this morning, Extinction Rebellion returned to Esso's West London oil terminal after blocking it on Friday. We have 2 bamboo structures, lock-ons, and around 30 people.
Extinction Rebellion and groups in the Just Stop Oil coalition have now blocked oil facilities across the UK for 4 days. Over the weekend, Just Stop Oil continued to block oil depots in Grays, Purfleet, Buncefield, Tamworth and Central Birmingham.
The action continues as the disruption begins to be felt at petrol pumps. Over the weekend, there were reports that petrol stations were empty with people asking whether there was a fuel crisis.

We will continue to block oil facilities until the government agrees to stop all new fossil fuel investments immediately.


277756287_289098803394096_893920290378791333_n.jpg

277777427_289098793394097_6705499276923222511_n.jpg

277579526_289098760060767_4510002694567435644_n.jpg

277576581_289098716727438_2665960025677225530_n.jpg
 
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