People willing to give up their freedoms and liberty to raise the alarm that we’re on course for millions of deaths and collapse of society = worthless rats. Got it.
Protests at oil installations make sense, and people protesting in a way that inconveniences politicians is something I love to see.
But I don’t know what Just Stop Oil is hoping to achieve with a lot of their protests in Britain. They seem to do more harm than good, and actually turn a lot of people who are on the fence against their cause.
They don’t seem to bring attention to the issues, only attention to themselves. And they’ve managed to turn a lot of people from “not interested” to actively against them and their cause.
The message is known by everyone, it’s constantly being talked about regardless of Just Stop Oil.
If anything it detracts from the conversation because when people talk about climate change, some people’s go to response is saying “those Just Stop Oil protesters are a nuisance”.
Their actions seem to frequently cross the line of just getting people to pay attention, as they don’t just try and use events to be seen, they actively try to ruin those events entirely.
They’re basically the PETA of climate change. Where they often harm their own cause because they operate by the creed that more people would be on their side “if they only knew”, so most of what they do is designed mainly to get attention from the public.
A great example being the video of a medical professional yelling a bunch of them. Because they glued themselves to the main road ambulances used to get to the ER.
Of course more people would be on their side if they knew the collapse of society was at stake! And more people are on their side, where do you think all these people slow marching keep coming from?
If anyone is “actively against them” then the media is failing to properly inform. We are talking about the end of civilisation as we know it, this is not “their cause”, this affects every single person on earth.
It’s not true that “everybody talks about it anyway”. They don’t. It’s rarely spoken about with the candor required. When was the last time you saw a climate scientist on the news?
As long as awareness of the crisis goes up (which it does), then Just Stop Oil popularity doesn’t matter.
From this point on awareness inevitably goes up as we start to see the effects of climate change first hand.
I don’t know what news you’ve been watching, but I see climate change discussed near daily. ULEZ has been in the news recently and people are talking about the politics surrounding how we actually take action when it’s being impeded by NIMBY people, which is a productive discussion to have.
Meanwhile, all the talk about Just Stop Oil is around the disruption they cause and people saying they hate them. Nobody brings up Just Stop Oil and talks about their cause.
Morally they’re in the right, but in reality they’re harming their cause more than helping it. 10+ years ago these tactics would’ve brought more attention than climate change was getting, now they’re a distraction.
You’re right that exposure in the news has gone up due to the extreme weather events, I have still seen reports highlighting the fires and floods and failing to mention the climate crisis in them. But they still don’t bring on climate scientists and they still don’t make people aware we are on track for mass crop failures, a billion climate refugees, millions of climate deaths that put together means collapse of our society as we know it.
Even if people don’t talk about JSOs demand (which is entirely reasonable and backed by the science, btw), they know why these people out there. They also know they feel strongly enough about it to get shouted abuse, risk getting assaulted and get arrested. That does get through to people.
Please stop calling it “their cause”, it’s yours too.
Bourgeois democracy showing it’s face. Anything that challenges their hegemonic power, including climate action against oil companies, will be labeled as eco-terrorists. When that happens, it will either successfully silence the people trying to prevent climate chaos or lead to more extreme action.
Why? The people in power within our capitalist society are not from the working class. That makes them part of the capitalist class. That means that they will serve their class interests rather than the needs of the working class. That’s the literal definition of bourgeois democracy.
So every country except a few in the Global North serves class interests rather than the working class? What country in the Global South is serving the working class?
No, every single country in the Global North is a bourgeois democracy. Socdem governments in Europe are still bourgeois democracies. The countries that are actually benefiting the working class include Vietnam and Cuba, where the QoL is very impressive for the Global South. I already know what your reaction will be, so just know I’m only interested in continuing this angle of discussion if you respond in good faith.
I’ll get to those declarations in a little bit. Instead let’s talk about their quality of life. They have a higher life expectancy, virtually no homelessness, healthcare is a right, people are more free to persue passions like healthcare, science, and mathematics, among several other similarities. Cuba in particular has a longer life expectancy, higher literacy rates, better healthcare outcomes, and lower infant mortality when compared to the US. The minimum wage in Cuba is equivalent to USD$17.50/hr, and the median wage is USD$33/hr. Cuba and Vietnam outperform comparable countries in most socioeconomic indicators. That is what I mean by proletarian democracy, even if I’d call the economies in those countries “state capitalism”. There’s a youtuber from Vietnam called Luna oi! that discusses what it’s actually like to live in Vietnam as a citizen, she provides valuable insight into the political life of citizens.
"Cuba has historically—both before and especially during communist rule—performed better than other countries in the region on several socioeconomic indicators, such as literacy, infant mortality and life expectancy. Cuba has a universal health care system which provides free medical treatment to all Cuban citizens."
If you are lower class in the US, you don’t have as much access to these living standards. That’s why the US isn’t always included in the present definitions. Is it technically first-world? Yes, especially if you’re rich and can afford healthcare. If you’re not, then no, it isn’t.
The US is first world, and always will be, because first world literally means “the US and it’s allies”. It has nothing to do with economic opportunity or the lack thereof.
No, it’s close to the mean wage that includes data for billionaires. The median wage in the US is roughly $54000 or $25.96/hr. As we all know, the federal minimum wage is still $7.25/hr as set in 2009. This is the longest time in US history since the minimum wage was changed.
No, the Global North and Global South are not strictly defined by hemisphere, though that is how the names came about. They are useful terms to describe the relationship of power imbalance through imperialism. The Global North includes the US, Canada, Australia, and Western Europe. The Global South includes countries in Africa, Latin America, South America, and Eastern Europe.
You are born free. Most of the world takes less of your freedoms than the US and Europe. The United States of America has more prisoners per capita than pretty much anybody else. You have been taught that you are the most free just like everybody else is taught by their country.
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