According to multiple news reports, an Insulate Britain protester predicts violence if peaceful protests are stopped. We do not and cannot support such a stance, despite us strongly supporting climate conscience, net zero strategies and imminent changes to support lowering carbon footprints everywhere. A few of them have now been jailed.
The media is full of ideas, progression of new technology, strategies for lowering carbon footprints to zero.
More violence, more disruption will make things worst rather than better. Whilst we strongly support climate positive action through invention of new technology, phasing out of old technology, improving air quality through various measure, we also must understand that people must be able to get food, clothing, medicines, housing and it must be produced, transported. Waste must be collected.
We do not support a complete breakdown of our civilisation to further climate action.
Climate action started well but key public figures who became ‘protestors’ as their main ‘occupation’ do not set good example to children. Our children will serve society the most by gaining excellent qualifications and helping to develop those needed new lifestyles, technologies and life-style methods.
Parents are better off, learning better lifestyles with their children in their every-day activities like changing from driving to school by car into walking, cycling or public transport rather than keep on using the car but going to a protest on the weekend instead. Another great idea is to purchase less throwaway items and recycle and re-use instead.
One recent Neighbourhood Watch competition invited children to design a tree house, which was then built.
We also aim to reduce the production of leaflets in favour of paper-less communication, but this must go hand-in-hand with a general up-take of paperless technology. We must reach all with whatever we do.
Driving protests into more violence over any issue simply increases the burden on society to stop those violent actions, increase law enforcement, produce more containment strategies to keep such protests under control. This alone with reduce the capacity of any society to develop better methods of lifestyle because every person that needs to be used to enforce the law will not be available to develop new technologies.
We stand shoulder to shoulder with our law makers, enforces, who want to give our children a chance to develop and make this earth a place to live for future generations.
Nobody should shy away from reporting unlawful behaviour because it happens within a protest movement.
There are many positive news published daily like
There are many mainstream positives about climate action and those outweigh the negatives.
When I then read articles that Bob Geldoff advises people not to pay their water bills over raw sewage dumping, that brings some sort of legitimacy to a protest. Negligence, which actually and immediately destroys vital natural resources, are precious to people and not paying bills, does mean protesting, but it does not mean being violent and causing a larger existential threat than the damage. With an indirect protest, which doesn’t involve disrupting users of traffic system indiscriminately but is targeted against a service provider by withdrawing payments, which in turn can be dealt with on a legal basis, points can be made, often as a last resort to address shortcomings of service provision.
There is always an often very fine balance on what is and what is not legitimate. Our coordinators and members live in communities and are part of the general population, therefore have interests and livelihoods to protect.