Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to the Financial Times, you build people’s support for your cause by adding to the misery of their work commute.
Climate change protesters are telling us the deadly truth
Extinction Rebellion challenges decades of belief that pessimism backfires
Camilla Cavendish
APRIL 19, 2019The furious reaction to this week’s climate change demonstrations in Amsterdam, Paris and other cities is in marked contrast to what I’ve observed on the streets of central London this week. “Sorry for the inconvenience” said the young bearded men at Marble Arch, where protesters closed the junction. Further south, one chauffeur-driven executive leaned out of his stationary car window to tell cameras that “climate change matters”.
Attempts to portray this movement as a bunch of angry, self-indulgent hippies don’t capture the reality. I met grandmothers who have never marched before, and commuters who decided to join in. On Oxford Street, one placard summed up the mood of regretful determination. “I apologise” it read “but I don’t know what else to do”. That echoes what many of us feel, as we watch our societies distract themselves with everything except the looming climate emergency.
…
But if this movement can continue to capture the headlines, it might achieve the sustained change that we need. Government action will follow when voters become sufficiently worried. People feel deeply about the natural world, but the silence on the creeping threats to our planet has been extraordinary. Few people are even aware that we are living through a mass extinction of species.
…
The green movement lost years of progress when it went red. In campaigning for things like social housing, world government and the minimum wage, it blurred its message and alienated much of its potential audience. It also enabled successive US presidents to claim that climate change was a pinko conspiracy. When the old movement campaigned against clean nuclear power, it made green prophets like James Lovelock despair.…
Read more: https://www.ft.com/content/6b044d08-61cb-11e9-9300-0becfc937c37
I used to be a London commuter. I can’t help thinking there is a massive disconnect between the feckless dilettantes and climate obsessives who seem to have the leisure time to join weekday climate protests, and ordinary people commuting to work to pay their bills.
Trying to get to work in cities like London is often a thoroughly miserable experience.
Tube strikes, gridlocked traffic, terrorist attacks, the constant risk of being assaulted or mugged, endless maintenance overruns, being squished like a sardine on the Jubilee line or other busy metro lines, paying exorbitant first class prices just to get a seat, melting in Summer, freezing in Winter, worrying about when you will get home to your family and kids, hoping nobody has vandalised your car sitting in an open, unsecured parking lot near a graffiti covered station.
Your baby just missed their goodnight kiss from dad, again.
The last thing most people in these circumstances wants is a group of climate hippies saying “sorry” while deliberately inflicting even more misery on their daily commute.
I somehow doubt this effort to mess up everyone’s day will translate into significantly greater support for climate action.
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“I apologize … … but I don’t know what else to do”. Apart from being a tiresome twat. Yes, that should fix it.
“one chauffeur-driven executive leaned out of his stationary car window to tell cameras that ‘climate change matters’. ”
…apparently just not enough for him to eschew his comfort and luxury.
As I’ve said many times before…I’ll believe that the people harping about “climate change” take it seriously when they start living like they take it seriously. “Do as I say, not as I do” doesn’t cut it for me.
“Trying to get to work in cities like London is often a thoroughly miserable experience. ”
With technology you could put an office just about anywhere on earth. Yet these idiot corporations keep packing into the most congested places on Earth. I don’t get it.
The main reason that telecommuting isn’t widespread is that ‘the bosses’ have a need to be SEEN to be in charge! And THAT means that he/she feels that they HAVE to be able to see their employees – after all, how do they know that their staff are actually WORKING?
VR solves that, since you can all work in one virtual space, where the boss can keep an eye on you.
You’re right, telecommuting does give a strong incentive for family members to bug you to do stuff in work time (‘since you’re home, why not do the laundry, or cook supper?’) but once they’re trained that yes, you really are actually working and not taking a day off, it can improve productivity by keeping you out of pointless office meetings that would otherwise just waste your time.
I’m not even talking about telecommuting. Move the whole office to some place green and open. Spread out. De-clumpify.
For me, it’s improved ‘outa sight’, since I stopped driving 12 miles and back across London. I now catch the train. (A proper train that travels above-ground in the light and fresh air.) After a bracing 10-minute walk to the station, I rarely have to wait more than 5-minutes for the train to arrive. It usually arrives 2-minutes early and departs exactly at the posted time. Fifteen minutes is enough time for a quick crossword and then we are at the London terminus. After a quick change of trains – and again, I rarely have to wait more than 5-minutes, a very fast express gets me to my workplace. One hour from door-to-desk.
My route has yet to be targeted by these idiots (probably because it is their route home to Brighton).
Their targeting of public transport facilities seems ironic. I would have thought one of the central tenets of the ‘green’ idea was to encourage use of trains.
This is exactly the type of behavior that will cause society to collectively reign in the idiots. It is fine to believe in Armageddon, or ghosts, or aliens running Washington as long as it is just a harmless hobby that doesn’t affect the average person’s quality of life. But when you interfere with the rights and enjoyment of others they will very rapidly demand that you be restrained by any means possible, and if the present government doesn’t, then a new one will be found through the vote that will.
“the constant risk of being assaulted or mugged”
I’ve worked in various parts of London for a cumulative 20 years and lived there… and in all that time have never been mugged or assaulted or indeed known any work colleague who has.
London is far, far safer than US cities (where I have had dire warnings about certain districts while visiting).
And despite tube strikes and breakdowns, it has an excellent public transport system… far better than New York, for example.
Never been assaulted or mugged, but one scammer got on his knees saying he had just ben mugged could I please give him money for a ticket.
Same guy a year later with the same story (just five minutes after telling my son to look out for him)
not an assault or a mugging. but not so nice
btw I got his name – it was ‘whiff’ or ‘griff’ or some such. ….probably whiff
Walking back from Southwark to Waterloo one night 3 men got up, and sat down again when they saw how big I am. I was followed downstairs by two guys one afternoon in Mile End station. I didn’t seem them, but my South African friend was standing behind them, they shrugged, went back upstairs to wait for another target.
This disgusting drunk guy started spitting near my mum and sister to try to coerce us to give him money, I’m afraid my response wasn’t very diplomatic.
I know people who have been mugged and even raped in London streets.
So I stand by my statement that London is a dangerous place – though there are other parts of Britain which are more dangerous.
Portsmouth! If you get cough up in some “issue” with some “sailors”, it can be “interesting”. I can tell you that from experience. London, Waterford, Brussels, Wellington, Melbourne, Hong Kong, Los Angeles, New Your and Sydney no so much a problem in my experience, no-one goes near me anyway.
Griff, if you are genuinely trying to be convincing, can you avoid hyperbole and ambiguity? Can you please elaborate on what “dire warnings” you have received about “certain districts” while visiting the US? Specifically, what cities? And what were you warned about?
London is far, far safer than US cities
As long as you aren’t going into one of the “no-go zones” that is.
When commutes are painful, people want more routes, more options, and more lanes. They don’t want to reduce CO2 emissions or face hikes on taxes.
Doesn’t quite stack up with the interview I heard with a man who, when asked what he thought about the environmental protesters said I have just paid £70 for a taxi ride that cost me £3 by bus normally so what the f**k do you think I feel about the climate protesters?
What gets me is the environmental damage done by Microsoft canning windows 7 so we have to buy a new far more powerful, more current hungry computer that still does the work you used to do on a less powerful one slower on an operating system not really designed for desktop operation any longer. How many computers world wide will be trashed thanks to them? Why is no one protesting about that environmental damage?
cartman on south park nailed it
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Hippie,_Die
hippies come in all shapes, sizes, and ages.
To go with the heading image.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hf4EFDGP4yg
Very troubled times in the UK at this time. Mr. Weller was anti-capitalist, anti-Thatcher who came to power at about the same time, but was happy to become rich selling his work (Fair enough, that’s capitalism).
Dear Extinction Rebellion true believer, maybe you’re correct, maybe this is the best there is and all you have to look forward too is the gloom of doom and even more depressing doom. So whether you’re 3 or 30 years old, this is it. You future is all downhill from now on!
You can not fight it, you’re done for. And you should blame people like me who, despite our real poverty, enjoyed those unsustainable halcyon days of the mostly cool and wet 1960s, the freezing 1970s with its coming ice-age, the petrol crises, the fear of nuclear annihilation and nuclear winters, the late 1980 warm-up, etc., all enjoyed by burning fossil fuels in huge vehicles.
Yes we old white types are to blame for it all with our extreme profligacy from so many of us working long hours in difficult dangerous jobs, all-the-while willfully polluting. Ways that have ensured your kind will be thrust into a future of mass extinction, starvation and poverty, with little more than modern affordable fashionable clothing, modern medicine, over abundance of food, mass personal communication, affordable mass and individual transportation systems that take you to heated and/or cooled air-conditioned building, and to vacations just about anywhere on the planet, lives filled with so much instant gratification at the touch of a button, etc., etc.
I know you believe I should feel guilty for all I’ve done but no, I do not, and I will never feel so. You deserve it all and so much more!
Now live with it and when you survive to old age (however you define that), recall all the actions you’ve done that has really made a difference, that’s made the world a better place. Until then, just remember you’ve already seen the best there can ever be, from now on it’ll get rapidly worse for you ungrateful Extinction Rebellion ignoramuses.
Do you all really believe YOU deserve so much(?) because I don’t believe it!
The message they’re really sending is “I’m a clueless, know-nothing, self-indulgent asshole.”
I suppose you could win lots of people to your cause with a message like that. But it’s not very likely.
I see that in their latest stunt, Excretion Rebellion all lay down and ‘played dead’ in the main hall of the Natural History Museum.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/extinction-rebellion-arrests-pass-1000-on-eighth-day-of-protests/ar-BBWb46w?ocid=spartanntp&fullscreen=true#image=3
It would be more of a challenge for them to play the same stunt in the middle of Millwall Football Ground. I’d like to see that.