Extinction Rebellion

Bike ride tonight -

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... a chap who’s username is hugo is sticking up for finance...

The shift to services destroyed many environments local to those who worked in the industries you refer to. These were in turn only relocated to places where there is, still, basically no environment protection and the where the workers are even more exploited. The shift overseas, made possible by a history of colonial rule and slavery, was paid for in a large part by blowing through the north sea oil and gas reserves to raise cash for all those new people on the dole. That oil and gas was burnt cheaply and without any concern for the environment.

It’s not that this is a full picture but I do you think you are wrong hugo7

This reminds me of the trolling around the attack in Salisbury ...

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/extinction-rebellion-russia-questions-arrests-of-activists-as-it-brands-protesting-a-cornerstone-of-a4257991.html

If anyone has a cargo bike or trailer, they would be very very welcome at all sites. There is alot of fetching and carrying needed. PM me to get in the rebel riders thread or just show up and pitch in!

What has surprised me is how little they know.
One bright young man was washing his porridge bowl under a running hot tap, he was soon put straight.

I can't tell whether or not this is satire

It actually transpired he wasn't really a rebel at all. We were based in a building and we got "infiltrated"
This was the first clue and we got busted soon after he left. His lack of awareness should have rung alarm bells.
They just confiscated tons of stuff we were planning to use, on the grounds it was likely to be used to cause a public nuisance.
It's a bit of a pain as the cops will just bin it, straight to landfill probably. I can't see them sorting it for recycling.

This isn't satire is it... :/

Working in Westminster was made more interesting this week by the presence of the XR protesters.

Most of the students and staff at our school were really positive about it and there were loads of positive interactions. Running home on Monday down thr middle of closed-off streets was a great vision of London without road traffic.

Huge respect to the people camping out in a road in foul weather.

The ones playing "tribal" drums and doing "African" singing though - they should probably think about how that comes across to a group of socially and ethnically diverse students if they're all white. It's not a great look and will probably be quite counter-productive with the most politically engaged students.

There was a South American drumming troupe around who were pretty authentic/ ethnic. There are other drummers, the Samba band, which is a group as diverse as the rebels themselves and anyone can join any day. As you may notice they don’t have to have any experience!
There may have been more drummers though.
The vocal output does leave a bit to be desired I agree.

This was something outside Westminster Abbey at about 6pm one evening.

There was some good samba drumming on Monday.

Is there a ban on reporting XR in mainstream media? My train into London Bridge yesterday was stopped due to protesters on the track and on my way back north from London Bridge today all of Broadgate and Liverpool Street was blocked. I've seen nothing about either.

My name isn't Hugo and cheers for the judgment. I'll refrain from making judgments about your name and the glaring ommison coal from your list.

I was pointing out that there is more than one way to skin a cat and the importance of keeping an open mind.

Our economy is 80% service based. While not easy, that gives plenty of scope for changing existing sub-sectors within the framework of our existing quasi-capitalist system, in a way not possible say if you're Saudi Arabia. Of course the useless physical shit we buy would have to change, but that's only one part of that sector - what if we had explosion of masseuse? And instead of buying new groupsets we all had 3-4 massages a week?

The example of a derivatives trader, was in a similar vein to Keynes's burying banknotes. It's a job that's part of a constant redistribution of wealth with no new wealth creation which doesn't necessarily require a high carbon footprint like say - retail or North Sea oil. The underlyings don't even matter anymore. rhb's goat story is another great example of potential possiblity of low impact pointless capitalism.

Fwiw I think there are plenty of fundamental issues with our current system and struggle to reconcile this with climate change. However, I think it's a bit basic to just slag it off and only propose or believe a quasi-communist is the solution, when there are probably a mirad of possibilities.

Also not to sound like a dick, but there is no coherence in what you wrote and it sounds like you're just vocalising the chips on your shoulder.

#parklife

Anyway I was going to say Liverpool St seemed to look a bit small but fairly good natured.

There seemed to be a high police to protestors ratio. Is that the case? Or was it on par with Westminster etc.?

https://greenandblackcross.org/statement-on-extinction-rebellion-xr-why-we-can-no-longer-work-with-xr-organiser/

This ‘animal rebellion’ thing (fish have friends etc) seems like a bit of a hi-jack.

I think for a long time there has been a hope that "green capitalism" would develop and naturally detach economic growth/prosperity from resource extraction and carbon emissions. This great hope that capitalism would basically fix the problem. It hasn't happened for several reasons and I think more and more people no longer think it's a viable hope.
For me two reasons stand out:
Obviously it requires negative impacts to be financially valued/costed. In theory this could still happen, but it's not just costing carbon emissions that would be needed.
Humans are too tied to the "useless physical shit we buy".

greenandblackcross

Sad news, I’m happy they’ll continue to support those arrested so-far.

The final request (on the list) seems implausible on the face of it. There is no central control of the activist’s social media and the urge to share police tactics is pure instinct when you’re in the thick of it.

What has surprised me is how little they know. One bright young man was washing his porridge bowl under a running hot tap, he was soon put straight.

...This was the first clue and we got busted soon after he left. His lack of awareness should have rung alarm bells.

Could you elaborate on this?

I think protest is needed and welcome – climate change is clearly a crisis. Side note: If we collectively renamed the phrase to ‘Climate Collapse’ it might do something to highlight the urgency of the matter.

But surely how I clean my porridge bowl every morning has absolutely zero impact on climate change? If twenty firms are behind a third of all carbon emissions and pro fossil fuel think tanks, lobbyists, politicians and in turn governments continue to block real measures of change and a switch to renewables, then unless I’m washing my bowl in crude oil, well, does it matter?

Isn’t essentially what’s needed a total restructuring of capitalism? I often end up thinking that the very people at the top who could create meaningful change are the ones who have successfully made a lot of people at the bottom believe that using a cardboard straw is all they need do.

I’m genuinely not trolling here or being intentionally obtuse and I’m happy to be educated but I’d like to receive more than the often said “well if everyone thought like that...” response. Because isn’t the point that extinction rebellion highlights so well, that it doesn’t matter if we all scrubbed our porridge bowls clean with brute force alone, when it’s forecast that oil firms will produce an additional 7m barrels per day over the next decade, it’s those at the top who need to be forced to change.

Actually you should wash porridge under a cold tap as it’s all gloopy and sticky when you use the hot. Best to leave it to soak in cold.

But I guess the point is that this young man has never had porridge, not that he was uneducated about the ecologically correct way to wash bowls, and was therefore due to be ritually shunned. I mean, fair enough, it’s not 1962 anymore, you don’t have to eat fucking porridge every morning.

EDIT: I’ve been quite supportive of XR until now but if I have to eat porridge for ecological reasons then I’m out out

You could consider eating porridge for the health benefits, compared to processed cereals in breakfast cereals and the reduced carbon footprint of oats grown in the UK.

twenty firms are behind a third of all carbon emissions

I wish people would stop saying this. The people responsible for the carbon emissions are the end users, who are really Western consumers and governments (e.g. the US department of defence).

it’s forecast that oil firms will produce an additional 7m barrels per day over the next decade, it’s those at the top who need to be forced to change.

Again, they don’t produce all those barrels just for the sake of it - they produce it because there is demand for oil, due to transportation, heating, plastics and so on.

Surely we need to solve this on the demand side; just turning off the supply seems a reckless way to transition the economy.

The people responsible for the carbon emissions are the end users, who are really Western consumers and governments (e.g. the US department of defence).

Well, obviously providers and consumers are not wholly separable. Of course 'Western' lifestyle expectations are much to blame, but manufacturers also manufacture 'needs' and hence demand. There's absolutely no doubt that car manufacturers have massively contributed to increasing demand for cars, for instance.

Equally obviously, ethical behaviour on the part of companies probably won't happen without ethical behaviour on the part of 'consumers' and vice versa. So, both 'sides' have to work together in (effectively) going back along the road that we have travelled, e.g. in transportation reducing the need (and desire) to travel (increasing both is a hallmark of hypermobile modernism), but the difficulty with placing the consumers (assuming we're not talking about large governmental agencies like the US Department of Defense) first in this is that each of them has very little power, and it's elected political power that needs to get the ball rolling.

Also, how much lobbying do you think those 20 companies have done over the last 50 - 60 years? The political landscape has been shaped by the political and economic clout of these corporations and that’s not something they can wash their hands of by pointing at the consumer and saying ‘hey, we were just supplying a demand’.

If you are deep within a small group of environmental activists who are living on porridge and lentils and wearing hemp clothing and you wash your breakfast bowl under a running tap instead of washing all the utensils in a bowl at the same time (when there’s a pile that needs washing) and all that hot water is running down the plug you arouse suspicion to put it mildly