Is There An Effective Way To Protest?

[PeterRS]

It's happened again. The "Just Stop Oil" activists have taken their grievances out on a painting in London's National Gallery, this time a work by Velazquez, the Rokeby Venus. Instead of spraying paint or another less damaging activity, this time the two youths took hammers and smashed the glass in front of the painting. It has now been taken down while conservators estimate the damage and try to repair it. The activists have in the meantime been arrested and will be charged with criminal damage.

Photo: Kristian Buus/In Pictures/Getty Images

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/11/06/style/just-stop-oil-rokeby-venus-intl-scli-gbr/index.html

Celebrated artworks have become a favourite means of activism for these protestors. van Gogh's Sunflowers, da  Vinci's The Last Supper and Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring have all been damaged. Sports and entertainment events are also increasingly being targeted. At a concert at the famous Lucerne Festival two months ago, the conductor decided to let the climate activists make their protest to the audience before continuing with the concert. Video with English subtitles in the full-screen version of this CNN site.

https://edition.cnn.com/style/article/vladimir-jurowski-protesters-climate-scli-intl/index.html

But is deliberately damaging artworks or interrupting performances which audiences and spectators have paid for an effective means of protest? I suspect not. Surely it is merely a form of vandalism which does their cause little good apart from media attention? There has to be another way of drawing attention to very legitimate concerns like climate change. Our leaders are doing little about it. The UK Prime Minister has even gone back on his word (typical politician) and has promsed to issue more North Sea oil exploration licences. Denying climate change is now a useless exercise. It is here and threatens a good many more disasters than we have recently witnessed. Yet how to make the mass of people around the world and their leaders accept this and actually do something about it?

 

 

[forky123]

In my opinion, they should protest the lawmakers, the people taking money from oil companies, the oil companies themselves, etc. Targeting people going about their daily business, art galleries, etc is the easy option, self defeating (they will never win without public support) and leads to violence. 

[vinapu]

7 hours ago, PeterRS said:

 

But is deliberately damaging artworks or interrupting performances which audiences and spectators have paid for an effective means of protest? 

Damaging artworks is criminal and should be treated as such, even damaging those of dubious value. 

Interrupting performances may send message across but not necessarily in a way intended

[vinapu]

7 hours ago, PeterRS said:

 Denying climate change is now a useless exercise. 

always was.

I read somewhere that countries like Germany and Poland had 4 seasons and corresponding climate change happening   as early as IX century. Apparently there were wet and dry seasons in what is now India and Bangladesh  in V century already. 

[PeterRS]

9 hours ago, vinapu said:

always was.

I read somewhere that countries like Germany and Poland had 4 seasons and corresponding climate change happening   as early as IX century. Apparently there were wet and dry seasons in what is now India and Bangladesh  in V century already. 

And by this do you mean there is no climate change emergency today? Or perhaps you refer back to the last ice age as an example of climate change?

[vinapu]

10 minutes ago, PeterRS said:

And by this do you mean there is no climate change emergency today? Or perhaps you refer back to the last ice age as an example of climate change?

no, I'm not climate change denier. That is very complex and not fully recognized issue though. I was trying to be bit funny in my way.

If you mention ice age it can't be denied that climate substantially warmed without burning fossil fuels. Not trying to a start argument , just pointing how complex issue is.

Where I live climate change materializes bit differently as winter seem to be milder and summers less humid and scorching. It's not unique , it's why global warming was changed to climate change. Summer of 2023 was first since I bought AC in 1990 when I did not fire it even once. Fact that I was away for about half of time helped  but still it was another , it can be even argued, bigger half.

[PeterRS]

I believe you are correct in writing our climate does change over the centuries. And there have been periods of global warming along with something like 5 separate ice ages. The geology of every continent on our planet is marked by the last ice age and its retreat, rather as present-day glaciers are not pure white but marked by trails of black and brown being the rocks underneath them being ground up like powder as the ice makes its slow journey downwards.

But I find it very hard to believe that there are still people who deny the earth is presently undergoing some very major changes. Call it evolution if you will; most call it climate change. According to a recent Report - 

The climate crisis has pushed the planet’s stores of ice to a widespread collapse that was “unthinkable just a decade ago”, with Arctic sea ice certain to vanish in summers and ruinous sea level rise from melting glaciers now already in motion, a major new report has warned . . . The “terminal” loss of sea ice from the Arctic during summers could arrive within a decade and now cannot be avoided, it adds . . .

“There’s nothing we can do about that now. We’ve just screwed up and let the system warm too much already,” said Julie Brigham-Grette, a scientist at University of Massachusetts Amherst and report co-author, about the sea ice. “That milestone has now passed so the next thing we need to avoid is ice shelf collapses in Antarctica and the further breakdown of the ice systems in Greenland. We can’t stuff the genie back into the bottle once they are gone.”

. . .  Greenland’s ice loss has already committed around 30cm to sea level rise.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/nov/07/melting-arctic-sea-ice-summer-report

Meanwhile, governments appear to be doing very little, if anything. Yet it is clear that places like Florida, London, Bangladesh, Bangkok, Jakarta, the Nile Delta and a whole host of other parts of the planet will become uninhabitable unless governments spend massively like Holland on sea defences.  That country spent US$5 billion prior to 1997 and now adds €1 billion per year to keep the sea from its land. Apart from much of tha land being either just above or even below sea level, Holland's defences have held firm against not only rising sea levels but storm surges driving water down the North Sea towards the English Channel. As the Guardian article ends - 

“Rapid decarbonization is absolutely essential, it’s a moral obligation to the future . . . If we don’t accept that moral responsibility . . . it will be a human tragedy.”

[unicorn]

18 hours ago, vinapu said:

no, I'm not climate change denier. That is very complex and not fully recognized issue though. I was trying to be bit funny in my way.

If you mention ice age it can't be denied that climate substantially warmed without burning fossil fuels. Not trying to a start argument , just pointing how complex issue is...

Obviously, no one can deny climate change. However, your post seems to imply that the issue is "too complex" to pin this change on human activity. I'm not a climate scientist. That being said, virtually all those who are climate scientists seem fairly convinced that human activity, fossil fuels in particular, are the prime cause of the climate change we're all seeing. Unless you've been educated and trained to study this issue, I feel it's the height of arrogance to claim you know better than the actual scientists in this field, thereby pronouncing the issue as being "too complex" to pin to human activity. I wonder where it is that you could live that you used to, but no longer need to use air conditioning. That being said, your personal experience should not be relevant regarding an issue which has been well-studied by scientists around the globe.

https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2021/10/more-999-studies-agree-humans-caused-climate-change

"More than 99.9% of peer-reviewed scientific papers agree that climate change is mainly caused by humans, according to a new survey of 88,125 climate-related studies. The research updates a similar 2013 paper revealing that 97% of studies published between 1991 and 2012 supported the idea that human activities are altering Earth’s climate. The current survey examines the literature published from 2012 to November 2020 to explore whether the consensus has changed.

“We are virtually certain that the consensus is well over 99% now and that it’s pretty much case closed for any meaningful public conversation about the reality of human-caused climate change,” said Mark Lynas, a visiting fellow at the Alliance for Science and the paper’s first author. Reviewed Scientific Literature,” which published Oct. 19 in the journal Environmental Research Letters...". 

https://climate.nasa.gov/faq/17/do-scientists-agree-on-climate-change/#:~:text=Yes%2C the vast majority of,global warming and climate change.

"Yes, the vast majority of actively publishing climate scientists – 97 percent – agree that humans are causing global warming and climate change. Most of the leading science organizations around the world have issued public statements expressing this, including international and U.S. science academies, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and a whole host of reputable scientific bodies around the world. A list of these organizations is provided here...". 

[unicorn]

On 11/7/2023 at 2:24 AM, PeterRS said:

...But is deliberately damaging artworks or interrupting performances which audiences and spectators have paid for an effective means of protest? I suspect not....

I agree that these infantile acts of vandalism hurt, rather than help, the causes they're trying to promote. Had I been a supporter of the organisation involved, I would certainly have withdrawn my support, for example. I can somewhat at least understand Greenpeace, which harasses ships which hunt whales directly. However, neither London's National Gallery nor the artists involved are climate change deniers or promoters, so attacks on them are unwarranted. 

I suspect that these protesters were spoiled brats as children. In all likelihood, when they acted up as children, their parents gave into their tantrums instead of disciplining them. This probably taught these people behaviors which are ineffective and counter-productive in adulthood. When I was a practicing physician, I'd counsel parents to respond more effectively to misbehavior. If a child starts screaming that he wants candy while at the supermarket, buying the candy will shut him up for now, but will encourage further misbehavior. The appropriate response would be to tell the child that if he does not quiet down immediately, there will be no candy or desert for a week (ramping up the consequences if the misbehavior continues or escalates). Unchecked, these children become juvenile delinquents, and then criminals as adults (as seen here). 

[vinapu]

4 hours ago, unicorn said:

Obviously, no one can deny climate change.

what do you mean? ask Trump voters to start

[PeterRS]

4 hours ago, unicorn said:

I suspect that these protesters were spoiled brats as children. In all likelihood, when they acted up as children, their parents gave into their tantrums instead of disciplining them. This probably taught these people behaviors which are ineffective and counter-productive in adulthood. When I was a practicing physician, I'd counsel parents to respond more effectively to misbehavior. If a child starts screaming that he wants candy while at the supermarket, buying the candy will shut him up for now, but will encourage further misbehavior. The appropriate response would be to tell the child that if he does not quiet down immediately, there will be no candy or desert for a week (ramping up the consequences if the misbehavior continues or escalates). Unchecked, these children become juvenile delinquents, and then criminals as adults (as seen here). 

I cannot agree with your conclusion. I am not a physician but I come from a family that is almost exclusively members of the medical profession. I agree that giving kids candies basically to shut them up is not always good parenting. But I believe the vast majority of the millions and more marching and protesting about climate change do so because of firm beliefs - not how they were brought up.

Thank goodness the younger generation are taking on this issue. It illustrates to me why there should be a maximium age for leaders of countries. That the leading Presidential contenders at present in the USA would be 83 or 79 when taking up office is, in my view, some form of madness! The median age of world leaders is 62-63. If individual workers have to retire aged somewhere between 62 and 67, why should any elected leaders be permitted to continue beyond that age range? The argument will no doubt be they have acquired a wisdom that can be extremely useful. To which I'd say: well them, make them official Presidential advisers, but not the Presidents themselves.

Same with judges. The UK has a maximum age of 75. Fair enough. Judges are supposed to have more 'experience' and 'judgement'. At 75, the dreadful, lying, sexual molestor Clarence Thomas would be out in a matter of months. And yes I watched his confirmation hearings when I was working in Tokyo and I saw how Joe Biden stopped witnesses from testifying agsinst him in order to get the nomination approved. In his final 'defence', Thomas was clearly lying and did not answer the charges against him. Yet a man who should never have been near the Supreme Court is now its longest serving and most controversial member. Shame on that system!  

[unicorn]

2 hours ago, PeterRS said:

I cannot agree with your conclusion. I am not a physician but I come from a family that is almost exclusively members of the medical profession. I agree that giving kids candies basically to shut them up is not always good parenting. But I believe the vast majority of the millions and more marching and protesting about climate change do so because of firm beliefs - not how they were brought up...

What a reprehensible misrepresentation of what I posted. I never said that marching or protesting represented immature behavior. What I said was that taking hammers to an irreplaceable work of art represents immature (and counter-productive) behavior. Making an ass of oneself in the supermarket may result in a child getting his way if he has lousy parents. Making an ass of oneself as an adult will not only not lead to what the adult ass wants, but will often lead to jail time and/or civil penalties. Of course, I doubt these losers have the funds to pay for the damage they caused. However, they should go to jail and be forced to at least empty their bank accounts. If any of your family members were trained in pediatrics or family practice, they would have been educated on the consequences of poor parenting. 

[PeterRS]

3 hours ago, unicorn said:

What a reprehensible misrepresentation of what I posted.

Don't you read? You quote what I wrote but in totally the wrong context. What I wrote was -

6 hours ago, PeterRS said:

I agree that giving kids candies basically to shut them up is not always good parenting. But I believe the vast majority of the millions and more marching and protesting about climate change do so because of firm beliefs - not how they were brought up.

But I totally disagreed with this comment of yours -

10 hours ago, unicorn said:

I suspect that these protesters were spoiled brats as children. In all likelihood, when they acted up as children, their parents gave into their tantrums instead of disciplining them etc.

As for the physicians in my family, some of whom were/are in general practice, that is for them to say - not for you to tell them!