Climate protesters are taking action against Big Oil. UK courts are handing them prison terms akin to rapists and thieves
(www.cnn.com)
from FundMECFSResearch@lemmy.blahaj.zone to world@lemmy.world on 14 Sep 2024 13:49
https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/16482895
from FundMECFSResearch@lemmy.blahaj.zone to world@lemmy.world on 14 Sep 2024 13:49
https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/16482895
cross-posted from: slrpnk.net/post/13315099
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Huh, up to 10 years for disruptive protest? Looks like it’s only 8 years for a planned arson as long as you don’t hurt anyone.
In minecraft, that might send the wrong message.
Eh, I’m sure that my FBI guy and my Met guy have coffee together anyway.
Pfft, you’ve only got two guys? Amateur.
So, if you plan an arson as a protest, is that 8 years or 18 years?
woah woah woah! I don’t see a protest around here!
As long as you don’t slowly walk or away from the burning building, you should be fine. IANAL
It’s not a protest, I just felt like burning down some Big Oil headquarters! Those are two totally different things, I promise!
If you KILL these Big Oil people you’ll get the SAME Amount of Prison time!
<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/pictrs/image/fb8afc4c-c5da-45b4-ae4c-690c72a83fa0.webp">
(If the FBI sees this I’m joking)
This is just one of countless examples that we live in capitalist plutocracies — ruled by corporations and the richest family dynasties who make up their majority shareholders — masquerading as “democracies”. Sure, you can vote, but your only options are pre-approved.
When the people causing genocide, war, and ecocide are untouchable, their entire rule of law is invalid.
FPTP-voting was designed by wealthy romans for the benefit of wealthy romans millenia ago and that people accept this type of democracy today is just bonkers to me.
I would be more likely to sympathize with JSO if they engaged in direct action against the oil industry instead of the general public. Stopping ambulances and electric cars in traffic does not get the world to abandon oil.
If you’re going to commit a criminal offense regardless, at least target something that actively supports or benefits from the oil industry. They could go full Robin Hood, robbing businesses that support the oil industry and anonymously donating the proceeds to environmental causes. They could threaten car dealerships that sell ICE vehicles. While it is certainly illegal to burn down a gas station, at least that would be an attack on the object of their protests rather than the general public.
Nothing wrong with their stated cause, but their actions don’t support that cause.
Evidence suggests that disruptive protests actually help, rather than hinder organisations like JSO:
theguardian.com/…/disruptive-protest-helps-not-hi…
theconversation.com/climate-change-radical-activi…
theconversation.com/radical-environmentalists-are…
It’s all about raising awareness and facilitating discussions.
They would raise more awareness and facilitate more productive discussion and alienate fewer people and have a tangible, measurable effect by taking direct action against car dealership and gas stations.
The kind of “discussion” they have most “facilitated” is how to increase the penalties for impeding traffic. Their only “success” has been winning enough support for legislators to increase penalties and enforcement for “impeding traffic”
I mean, sure, but again the evidence suggest otherwise: apollosurveys.org/social-change-and-protests/
And as the articles I originally linked above shows the general public may think otherwise, which is understandable.
then why not embody the change you’d like to see. if it’s truly a better way, go nuts bro.
because from here it just looks like “why don’t they quit protesting and start blowing up oil facilities lol”
When black people fought for civil rights, they went where their civil rights were being infringed upon, they exercised their rights anyway, and showed the world the infringement. They didn’t go into black communities and hassle black people just going about their days to “bring awareness” to the problem of civil rights infringement. Because that would be stupid. You don’t harass the victims of infringement. You go after the perpetrators.
Now, the oil industry is victimizing the general public, and JSO… Is also victimizing the general public.
Fuck. That. Shit.
Target the oil industry, and get the fuck out of the street.
Nope. Targeting the industry alone isn’t going to change people’s way of thinking. Consumers who face no consequences for using a fuel that’s rapidly warming and destroying the ecosystem need waking up too.
Sounds like this upsets you, boo fuckin’ hoo.
And keep the black struggle for civil rights out of your fucking mouth, their work deserves better than you using them to shill for oil comfort.
Switching to an electric car doesn’t get them out of a JSO-sponsored traffic jam. Nothing about the JSO actions provides any incentive for the consumer to actually do anything about oil.
You take out the gas stations, you’ll actually be inconveniencing the consumers who still use them. And only those consumers. Everyone else is untouched. You’re also promoting the remaining shops that don’t offer fossil fuels, by removing their competition. You won’t be interfering with the ambulances and electric cars either.
Consumers will get the hint that oil is under indictment, and factor that into their next car buying decision. That doesn’t happen when an electric car doesn’t get them past a JSO traffic jam.
how about you do you and fuck off.
Sorry. Can’t. Stuck in traffic.
You approach the whole issue as if it were just up to consumers to stop oil by changing their habits. It isn’t. Switching to an EV isn’t a solution when you’re still paying taxes that go into subsidizing fossil fuels. (Switching to an EV for getting around in a city isn’t a solution anyways, use public transit or get a bicycle). Consumers won’t stop consuming oil until the full cost (including all externalities) of it is shown in the price tag. Action is needed at the political level, and that won’t happen unless enough noise is made regarding the issue. That’s what JSO is doing.
FTFY.
I’ll note that nobody in this thread has yet made a single comment promoting a specific political action against oil. Your last comment comes the closest, but even that doesn’t even qualify as a “concept of a plan”.
JSO isn’t inspiring people to talk about oil. They are inspiring people to talk about the limits of free speech, and the preservation of the right to travel. They’ve inspired legislators to act, just not in any way that would actually affect the oil industry. JSO has certainly accomplished something with their antics, just not anything that they’ve set out to do.
Again, direct action against the oil industry. Exploit it’s soft targets, raise the cost of oil, make alternatives relatively cheaper, and watch the problem disappear.
You do realize that you replied to a comment just now that raised the issue of fossil fuel subsidies, and the effect those have on the price and thus consumption of oil? Just ending those subsidies would already have a dramatic effect.
It’s true that the discussion is currently centered on freedom of speech, most notably because of the most recent developments, but the issue that is being protested is constantly present in the background. I’m betting that after the criminalization of protests stops being news, that issue gets back into the limelight.
Direct action against fossil fuel infrastructure would be less in the public due to a less central location. Sitting on a street works because it’s a nuisance to many, thus generating a lot of interest among the press and that way the message gets amplified. Gaining publicity via industrial sabotage would be difficult unless they did somehting very drastic, which would only turn them from a mere “nuicanse” into actual villains in the press. Especially so if some such drastic measure leads to the unintended death or injury of a worker at a refinery etc. This would also turn the fossil fuel companies from crooks into victims and I’m betting that they’d also try to frame it as sabotage hurting the blue collar workers they employ. All this while affecting the actual price of oil in a miniscule way at most and alienating the majority of their members who don’t accept these acts. Nonviolence is held in high regard.
The electric cars are powered by gas and coal in the uk. We are a long way from pure renewable electricity and between mining and shipping metals, steel, and tyres they’re not quite the perfect green vehicles they’re presented as.
It would be in the oil industries interest to fund agent provocateurs to become lightning rods for both willing protestors and public anger.
Just Stop Oil’s primary source of funding was donations from the US-based Climate Emergency Fund. Through that fund, a notable donor to the group has been Aileen Getty, a descendant of the Getty family which founded the Getty Oil company.
Sure, it’s not a great look I concur
theguardian.com/…/just-stop-oil-van-gogh-national…
theguardian.com/…/just-stop-oils-protests-funded-…
however we’re talking about 2% of their overall funding in 2023:
time.com/…/just-stop-oil-climate-change-activist-…
I’d argue that money from a climate fund that was cofounded by the daughter of a oil baron (who appears to be something of a environmental activist), whilst not ideal is a fair way removed from the idea that they are funded by the petrol companies as agent provocateurs.
Also, as I linked the evidence suggest they work, so if the likes of Esso are funding them it’s not their greatest work. Who knows. I believe they get a bad wrap. If anything I imagine it’s more likely the petrol companies are the ones pushing the negative narratives around groups like JSO to try and mute their effectiveness and turn the public against them.
The oil companies could fund individual agent provocateurs of JSO directly. Whoever decided to attack the general public is doing big oil a big favor.
Maybe, maybe not. Without clear evidence it’s all supposition. All we know is that, whilst people may not believe it, their actions are effective.
Their actions are effective at getting legislative action against protests and impeding travel. Their effects on stopping oil, however, have been somewhere between “completely ineffective” and “counterproductive”.
The reason people have a hard time believing their actions are effective is because their actions are not at all effective.
I can’t imagine their prison sentences if they were actually thieves. Look at what they’re getting for doing peaceful protests. People freak out when property is disturbed.
People freak out when travel is disturbed. They freak out quite a bit less when a big corporation that everyone hates happens to get targeted by environmental activists.
. . . that everyone hates so hard they give them loads of money.
I wish they all hated me like that.
I’ll DM you my ex wife’s info. She can teach you how to accomplish your goal.
“do something, anything as long as it doesn’t affect me”
FTFY.
Disruptions cause outrage
Outrage sparks discusson
Discussion leads to political pressure
Political pressure leads to action that targets the oil industry
So close, yet so far away…
FTFY.
The only thing they have actually achieved is enhanced enforcement and penalties for impeding traffic.
The process I described unfortunately does take longer than the initial lashing outs of the establisment. A couple of “martyrs” may not be the worst thing either.
YungOnions already provided you with some good articles about why and how nonviolent disruption works. I suggest you read them.
JSO “martyrs” are for the cause of free speech, not against oil. JSO is distracting people from oil. JSO is diverting legislative attention away from oil.
I suggest you stop reading articles, and start looking at reality. The reality is that JSO has demonstrated they are as effective at “disrupting” the oil industry as the Westboro Baptist Church has been at “disrupting” homosexuality: not the fuck at all.
I’m not sure how you managed to misunderstand, but by disruptions I was referring to precisely the kind of disruptions of the lives of ordinary people that - and I’m sure we can at least agree on this - they have quite successfully caused.
Our two parallel discussions are about the methods of protesting against the use of fossil fuels. Our discussions here exists because of JSO. It got you thinking about what should be done to get rid of the use of fossil fuels, even if this was just for the purposes of making counterarguments.
I agree, they’ve done a bangup job bringing attention to the ongoing fight against jaywalking.
Against oil, not so much.
In the Netherlands, since 2023, there have been quite a lot of road blockades by XR (with hundreds to thousands of demonstrators) with no such penalties at all. From what I've read the activists in the UK were (rightfully so) determined to have their say in the court room while the judge sounded like a climate crisis denial person and got impatient. If I were a lawyer I would have made an attempt to get this judge dismissed on the case for not being objective and before they were ready for their verdict.
There have been direct actions recently - they get subjected to media blackout. If you want to shift public sentiment, you need eyeballs - they get eyeballs, and while responses are obviously mixed, they lean positive over time.
Personally, I believe that criticising the efforts of activists with whom you share a cause is one of the lowest things you can do.
If I think there’s a better way, then I go do it, or at the very least I would participate in that group and try to bring them around to my way of thinking.
I definitely would not publicly criticise them because that doesn’t actually help the cause, it just damages it.
But of course, I can’t hold people to the same high expectations I hold of myself.
Their actions are damaging the cause. They are making it harder for environmental activism to be taken seriously. Now, actual activism has to fight not just the oil industry, but also everyone that JSO has pissed off.
They literally DID. The fact you don’t know about it shows why they also do their publicity stunts.
I heard about a car dealership and gas stations being lit on fire by protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin. When did JSO protesters do something similar?
It’s not hard to look up.
bbc.co.uk/…/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-61347944
Took 2 seconds.
What part of that is remotely comparable to the car dealership and gas station in Kenosha?
The part where it’s action targeting the oil companies? You know, like you were suggesting they do?
Ah. Thanks for clarifying.
I must confess, I see no noteworthy comparison. I question their commitment and resolve.
I wonder if they understand what they’re encouraging by making the punishment for protests harsher than the punishments for direct action…not that that’s any of my business…
Future excuses to crack down on “ecoterrorrists”?
arson time :)))) (in minecraft)
Humanity is in mortal danger because of conservatism. If you aren’t fighting conservatism, you aren’t fighting climate change.
To be fair, liberalism, while far better isn’t remotely close to being an adequate solution, but we all need to kick the can down the road by picking whatever least bad option is available to us.
Well, that’s the funny bit: the government in the UK aren’t the Conservatives, they’re New Labour who are Neoliberals, by the standards of the rest of Europe they’re even Hard Neoliberals.
Nowadays the difference between Conservatives and Liberals is really just the subset of Morality that’s used in Identity Politics. They’re certainly not different on Economics, not on Quality Of Life for the many, not on a good Future for our Children (which provides a Selfishness-driven reason be an Environmentalist, which is better than nothing) and certainly not on Environmentalism as a Moral posture.
We get some loud confrontational bullshit from both around various “-isms” all the while they’re both doing what’s best for the most wealthy of society and screw the rest (both present and future) and definitely screw anybody or anything that has no money and no capability for action, such as Nature.
You see that exact same shit in the US, by they way, as well as (in not quite as extreme form) in most of Europe.
If you aren’t fighting conservatism you are actively destroying the planet.
Neolibs sell us out to big oil just as much as neocons do. The root problem is capitalism. You cannot fight against climate change without fighting against capitalism
Neoliberals are conservatives. Sadly, we do not have a progressive party in the U.S., so we must choose one of the conservative parties.
Bruh, I misread the title at first and thought Big Oil was sentenced but the reality is just sad and angering.
We can dream…
Totally approrpiate, since they’re terrorists endangering the well-being of everyone and the planet. Wait…
I thought that was final Fantasy vii…
Meanwhile the UK still keeps on sending weapon shipments to an actively Genocidal Israel (they recently stopped but 20 out of 300 kinds of such exports).
It didn’t took long to disprove the hopes of anybody who thought New Labour would be anything but a slightly less hard Right than the Tories.
There could be a feel good story about a kitten being saved from a well and you’d somehow tie it in to gaza.
Nice, an Appeal To Absurd Falacy in the wild.
Hadn’t see one of those in a day or two.
It says a lot that you went for making fantastical claims about the messenger rather than for disproving the message.
The message is an important one to attend to. But not every post on Lemmy requires a reminder that gaza is a genocide or that people are enabling it.
Having lived in the UK and even participated in a politics there (as a member of the Greenparty, FYI) it seems to me that both the English’s power elites’ support of an ethno-Fascist regime abroad even while it activelly commits Genocide (reminiscent of Thatcher’s support of Apartheid South Africa and of Pinochet in Chile) and their authoritarian solutions to Environmentalism as a “problem” of people demonstrating rather than the Environment being destroyed, are all part of a broader pattern of Rightwing Authroritarianism were also fit things like the extreme Civil Society Surveillance denounced by Snowden (which, curiously, whilst in the US some was deemed unconstitutionally and walked back, in the UK laws were passed to make it all retroactively legal and the Press was shut up using D-Notices) and other general trends in the exercise of power in the country (remember how the Tories passed a law that de facto created minimum £1000 penalties in all criminal cases).
This is not even new - Environmentalist organisations were infiltrated by undercover police back in the 80s/90s who even left some women there carrying their children and things like kettling were used against demonstrators back in the big anti-Finance and anti-Austerity demonstrations in London after the 2008 Crash were even an unarmed and non-violent person got killed by a police officer (a case were the officer in question ultimatelly got out with no meaningful penalty).
Brexit wasn’t born in a vacuum and compared with the rest of Europe the UK has been further Right and more Authoritarian, copying the worst bits of the American system rather than the best and mixing them with a heavily and well entrenched classism and the idea that people should know their place, with no tradition of rule by consensus and an electoral system - First Past The Post - that generally results in Winner Takes All outcomes were a mere 35% of votes is enough for absolute majorities which are pretty much all powerful since Britain foesn’t have a written Constitution.
Having lived in a few countries in Europe, I came out of over a decade in the UK with the idea that it was the country in Europe most likely to turn Fascist. A posh style of Fascism but Fascism none the less.
Sadly New Labour, who ideologically are something else altogether than (old) Labour, seem just as prone to Authoritarianism as the Tories, which actually makes sense given that it was during New Labour’s last period in Government that the most extreme civil society surveillance apparatus in the West was built in Britain.
TL;DR in summary, Britain even under New Labour is very rightwing and riddled with authoritarianism and their unwavering support (once again) for violent Fascism abroad fits the pattern and is a nice reminder of how its power elites think.
Disruptive protests are annoying and the best way to get people to hate your agenda. In Finland there’s a group that actively protests climate stuff by taking control of the streets, making people getting to and off from work just annoyed.
You don’t achieve change and can’t further your goals by being a prick to the normal everyday people. All you achieve is them wanting nothing to do with what you are peddling.
Imagine this comment existing before woman’s suffrage.
Mass protests are how change has always happened to the oppressed. The oppressed have always continued to be oppressed when they take the stance of your comment.
Quite a bridge there, to compare governments and companies ruining our habitat to women’s suffrage. Holy hell.
9 to 5 Joe is’t making the decisions and won’t be able to affect the situation apart from voting and activism, and these protests I talked about are only annoying the people the activists should be trying to win over, to be able to make a change.
Suffrage wasn’t about profit driven business, it was people being shit to people, the poor and the rich all together, if we simplify it to the root.
Maybe I missed it but it seems the average Joe voted for people that are responsible for what’s going on right now instead of trying to change direction drastically right?
That’s pretty much it. Now should we hold the politicians responsible, or should we piss on the Joes? I’d personally see the protesters inconveniencing the politicians, and not the Apple Store employee trying to get to his work shift.
Good example in Finland is gay rights, we got those by pressuring politicians, not by chaining ourselves to roads. It’s been proven to work, and the opposite has been seen to just get people fed up.
I think protesting against the vote of the average Joe in a way that affects the average Joe is quite valid. The politicians got voted for their policies, they wouldn’t be doing their jobs if they just shifted their whole position because of a protests that are expressing quite old ideas. The average Joe has to stand up and vote for people that actually want the change we need.
The pressure regarding queer rights was successful because it became a less and less favourable position to be against those same rights in the public view. Being conservative regarding fighting the climate change is still a pretty favourable position so not enough pressure can be built by protests against politicians alone.
And, one aspect that is overlooked in the discussion, at least in my opinion: People are allowed to be angry at the state of the world and the popular opinions, and express that anger publicly and in the face of the general public. This is a valid thing to do.
Oh those damn Conservatives, such things would never happen under the rule of the Labour Party.
Right?
Hey good thing is people are not as numb to the class warfare nowadays as before so your coy attempt to make this partisan isn’t as effective.
Ah, yes. Thank you for reiterating my point by using instead of sarcasm the always very funny false accusation method.
At least my iteration can’t be mistaken unlike yours (Your sarcasm was too thin to notice for me)
The police and army do not protect the lives and freedom of individuals and they never have. They exist to create the conditions for business to do business. The law barely cares if you rape and murder some poor, powerless individual. But cause a big business some serious property damage? Oh no we can’t have that. Time to make an example of you.
I wonder what will happen to those prisoners once climate change gets even worse
Texas inmates are being ‘cooked to death’ in extreme heat, complaint alleges
…
Concentration Camps.
when society turns on the people with a conscience, the people with a conscience should turn on society. stop playing nice.
What’s your next move, hot shot?
not being trolled by lemmy d list celebrities, and then, i don’t know, maybe i’ll smoke a joint.
I wish for the responsible judges, politicians and CEOs to get spat in the face by their own children for being the disgusting vile pieces of shit that they are. Sadly, too often, the apple does not fall far enough from the tree.
Kinda relevant: from the latest Private Eye. Just a little insight to the background of the people pushing for this outcome.
<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/f7796db0-0bfc-459e-84f4-bdc759360093.jpeg">
<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/36e5b43a-5bca-47db-b540-518fd99dd31c.jpeg">
The Heritage Foundation who would have guessed it would be in the mix.
Good, they are part of the problem.
Proof
If you are getting life in prison, might as well blow up an oil rig or something right?
If they go the route of severe punishment for not severe crimes