AGW protesters glue themselves to gov energy department (UK)

[Duty]

First off, can you think of an instance, even one, where protests of this type and scale have EVER effected change in government or business policy? I'll save you the trouble - you can't. A handful of people defacing property and gluing themselves in place are simply not enough of a nuisance to cause an energy company to change their scandalous money-making methods, or cause government to pressure them to do so. If you could get 100 000 or so members of Extinction Rebellion to march down Whitehall, you might have a shot.

If you want to impact a business, the one method which has proved effective is economic boycott.  If you want to impact government, you'll need to convince enough like-minded people to vote your way.  But what the people in your links are doing really (and sadly) amounts to nothing more than pointless grandstanding.  A better use of their time and resources would be to invest in renewables and organize petition drives.

Boru

There was a woman who refused to move from the back of a bus once, and somebody else who jumped under a race-horse but those examples are beside the point. Yes there are no identical examples of protests in an identical climate (NPI) but that is not how linear time works. The occupy Wallstreet protests certainly raised awareness, and that is perhaps a closer example. It's a long time until we Brits next go to the polls...a VERY long time.

Organising boycotts/petitions are good ideas, but substantially less likely to make the news (awareness raising) and a lot more long- winded. They also do not involve putting one's own wellbeing in jeopardy, which suggests a certain lack of conviction compared to, for example, glueing oneself to this or that and getting arrested. Good ideas though, just not analogous really, so I'm gonna have to say "fail" there RE my request.

Investing in renewables - good idea...how does one do that exactly on a large scale? That's government's job innit? Good idea, again, though.

I now understand the South Park episode all those years ago featuring Al Gore's obsession with manbearpig.

[The Grand Nudger]

Investing in renewables - good idea...how does one do that exactly on a large scale? That's government's job innit? Good idea, again, though.

I'd say no.  Not only is it not the governments job, the government cannot not be entrusted with that job.  If it were a job, and the government were any employee...then they would have long ago been terminated for cause, and we'd have found someone who was interested, and could do the job.

Someone like you, someone like those activists.  

That we conceptualize this thing as someone else's job, even in the face of that someone else's repeatedly demonstrated incompetence, provides at least some of the explanation for why the job is not getting done.  

I don't expect trickle down climate policy to work any better than trickle down anything else.  The investments made by governments in renewables have followed a familiar pattern.  That cash is gobbled up by the industry's worst actors.  Solar development initiatives, for example, provided the necessary capital to destroy industry watchdogs by means of unscrupulous producers literally buying up those seats and turning the body into a marketing firm for dirty panels.  This coup ran responsible producers directly out of business.  This is analagous to a development initiative in all beef patties being coopted by people looking to sell ground cat meat.  The cat meat processors purchased the resellers and planted stooges on advisory boards. They redefined all beef patties to refer to cat meat, then fobbed off as much cat meat as they could while beef producers went out of business.  Now that money is gone, disappeared into the pockets of cat meat processors, and with them the market space that would have robustly supported anyone looking to sell all beef patties. I mean,.yeah, sure, we'd love to buy some..but we already have thirty pounds of cat meat in the freezer and money is tight.

Those producers blew the bullhorn about this for as long as they could as loud as they could - all for naught.

[Duty]

Investing in renewables - good idea...how does one do that exactly on a large scale? That's government's job innit? Good idea, again, though.

I'd say no.  Not only is it not the governments job, the government cannot not be entrusted with that job.  If it were a job, and the government were any employee...then they would have long ago been terminated for cause, and we'd have found someone who was interested, and could do the job.

Someone like you, someone like those activists.  

That we conceptualize this thing as someone else's job, even in the face of that someone else's repeatedly demonstrated incompetence, provides at least some of the explanation for why the job is not getting done.  

Government intervention has a big role in our hitting emission targets, in the UK at least. They really have a punch like no other, when they aren't pulled, as in your example. Many Janes and Johns do, and continue to do, lots of work promoting/realising reducing carbon footprints. That doesn't mean the gov shouldn't act with committed expediency AS WELL. I'm off to bump that thread about thermal clothing and thermostats now...

[The Grand Nudger]

I'm absolutely on board with you about the ability of government, when it's properly motivated and acting in good faith with reasonable expectations and sound policy decisions.....to organize a campaign far beyond the ability of any individual citizen.  I'm only pointing out that this potential for effective action has not, as of yet, matched up with the reality of our governments actions.  That we hit an emission target is great....but that doesn't change the fact that the green movement is being coopted by polluters, and focusing on the emissions metrics is one way that these polluters have hidden the total footprint and cost of their actions. That was the point of capturing industry watchdogs and advisory boards.

Even with the best of intentions (which, lol, they don't have) they get gamed. To a certain extent it's impossible to prevent this because governments are bound by laws that a private citizen is not (and here again, industries have incredible power to shape those boundaries as well - effectively forcing the governments hand).

[Duty]

Extinction Rebellion have tons of groups globally now, growing all the time, yippie! Here's a map of them:

https://actionnetwork.org/forms/find-your-local-group