Extinction Rebellion folks scale the Jacques-Cartier
Three Extinction Rebellion adherents scaled the Jacques-Cartier bridge Tuesday morning and unfurled a banner, while others chanted below. The bridge has been closed in both directions, and is still closed as I post this.
Update: Both sides are reopened around 9. Three arrests were made.
Kevin 10:30 on 2019-10-08 Permalink
Greenpeace The Next Generation: Doing the same stuff environmental activists have been doing for my entire life and hoping this time it will actually change something.
nau 11:38 on 2019-10-08 Permalink
Well maybe if you’re lucky, you’ll live long enough to see them lose all hope. I imagine you’ll enjoy being snide about that too.
Michael Black 11:42 on 2019-10-08 Permalink
To be fair, when Greenpeace sailed to Amchitka in the fall of 1971, their intent was to stop the atom bomb detonation by being in the way. When they went out to stop whaling, they did get between the whalers and the whales.
But yes, a key component was getting press. They had Bob Cummings, of the Georgia Straight, Bob Hunter, I guess it was the Vancouver Sun, and someone from the CBC I think, on board.
But with time, Greenpeace grew, and became more about stunts to get press. They broke secondary laws, not directly connected to the cause, to get the publicity. So climbing a bridge or tower to raise a banner often resulted in arrest, but it was incidental to the goal of raising a banner. You don’t hear about the arrests being challenged in court. I don’t know but suspect fines are paid by the organization, rather than serving time. Even in 1979 when some parachuted into the construction site for the Darlington,Ont nuclear power plant, it was more about getting press.
That said, this did seem more !ike Greenpeace, where climbing ability comes before non-violence training. Considering I saw two articles last week about non-violence training, I was surprised this new group went with climbing the bridge that requires existing skill, rather than a blockade using recently trained people.
I’d say it’s the willingness to be arrested that has the potential to change people, not making things inconvenient to others. Things get muffled with the change from breaking an unjust law to breaking a secondary law. If you get served at that lunch counter, you’ve changed things, if you don’t get served the arrest may change others. But if you blockade the Litton factory in Toronto, you may not be effective at shutting it down, even briefly. Though your willingess to be arrested may change people’s minds about nuclear weapons. But if you get arrested for climbing a bridge, and inconvenience the public, you may not change anyone, especially if the trial is out of sight, an incidental to the banner raising.
Michael
Kevin 12:26 on 2019-10-08 Permalink
@nau
I have no interest in people losing hope.
But protests and stunts are not effective means of creating change. They’re attention-grabbing, but they don’t do anything.
Come up with concrete ideas to reduce the usage of greenhouse gases and with ways to implement them, or with ways to alter the environment so that we can cope with the effects of climate change.
For example, the government could alter fuel efficiency requirements by testing at real highway speeds (not 97 kmh), or require better fuel efficiency for individual makes, and not give companies an ‘out’ by judging fuel efficiency by the fleet of vehicles. (Because a hyper-efficient Ford Fiesta doesn’t offset the most popular vehicle in Quebec: the F150 pickup truck.)
How about going after coal? Saskatchewan, Alberta, and New Brunswick are still burning COAL to make electricity. Change that and 10% of the country’s GHGs will be eliminated.
So I’m not being snide. I just think the activists are not looking in the right place.
Kate 12:34 on 2019-10-08 Permalink
Kev, New Brunswick, really? Don’t they have enough space and running water to do hydro?
Doesn’t all of Canada?
nau 12:50 on 2019-10-08 Permalink
I know a guy who works at a enviro think tank in the States that was pointing out the emission reducing benefits of mandating better fuel efficiency approx. 15 years ago and I doubt the idea was new then. People have been calling for an end to coal power for a long time as well. Enviromentalists have been coming up with concrete ideas for your entire life (or most of it) and hoping it will actually change things and I think you probably know that. So colour me unconvinced that you really intended anything other than to snark at the youthful activists. I don’t think you have any interest in them losing hope, but they will and when they do, the resulting nihilism might leave you nostalgic for the days when they used to annoy you by climbing bridges and droppng banners.
CE 12:55 on 2019-10-08 Permalink
@Kate, your question re New Brunswick can be answered with the name of one incredibly rich and influential family: Irving.
nau 14:59 on 2019-10-08 Permalink
I think we can be pretty sure that if other provinces had the same opportunities to develop large-scale hydro as Quebec, BC and Manitoba, they would already have done so. NB has several hydro power facilities (though only two over 100 MW) but apparently hasn’t built one since the sixties. While I’m all for highlighting the malign influence of the Irvings, I suspect that as far as large-scale hydro goes, NB probably doesn’t have any more resources to tap (and didn’t have any genuinely big ones to begin with). NB, Saskatchewan and Alberta are all too flat for the size of the rivers they have.
Kevin 15:07 on 2019-10-08 Permalink
@Kate
Yup. Alberta leads, but NB is third.
But our weak federal government doesn’t do much to run hydro lines east-west.
@nau
Allow me to repeat myself since you missed my point.
Come up with concrete ideas to reduce the usage of greenhouse gases and WITH WAYS TO IMPLEMENT THEM.
That’s what the movement fails at. It’s been failing at that for decades. Rallies and protests have one goal: awareness, but they never take the next step and make actual changes.
Michael Black 15:09 on 2019-10-08 Permalink
On the other hand, the Grand Coolee Dam in Washington state brought water to dry areas, and power so Seattle could become industrial. The sc’win have never fully recovered, the dam making it hard to get upstream.
And it caused a burial site to be moved. If I’m reading things right, that ncludes some distant relatives.
Ecology is about how things interact. Do this and there’s always impact.
Michael
Kevin 15:48 on 2019-10-08 Permalink
Police are recommending charges of mischief and conspiracy. They’re due in court Oct. 24.
Kate 17:43 on 2019-10-08 Permalink
Thanks for the update, Kevin.
nau 16:40 on 2019-10-08 Permalink
@Kevin You wanted to make the point that the enviro movement needs to move on to implementing its concrete ideas, so you posted “Greenpeace The Next Generation: Doing the same stuff environmental activists have been doing for my entire life and hoping this time it will actually change something”. In the spirit of interpretive generosity, I’m going to characterize that as magnificiently (not to say absurdly) subtle.There are certainly clearer, politer ways you could have proceeded.
On the off chance you are serious about advocating that the movement move on to make actual changes, it can’t really have escaped your notice that they don’t have the necessary power to do that, so I’m not sure what you’re really suggesting they do. If it’s follow the electoral route, note that the Green Party has existed in Canada for most of your adult life without changing much of anything either. Maybe if we had another 30 years, they could actually form the government and start doing things, but we don’t. The reality is that the enviro movement has been ineffectual because people don’t want to make the necessary sacrifices now to prevent dire impacts in the coming decades and centuries.
Chris 21:41 on 2019-10-08 Permalink
nau said “the Green Party has existed in Canada for most of your adult life without changing much of anything either” -> are you sure about that? interesting that you chose a chunk of a lifespan as your timescale. It indeed takes humanity that kind of timescale to turn the ship. Perhaps the Greens banging at it for a couple of decades is part of why climate change is so at the forefront now.
JaneyB 08:56 on 2019-10-09 Permalink
Side note: Ontario tapped out their hydro dam options by the 60s. Coal has finally been shuttered there with the closure of Nanticoke under McGuinty (15% of Ont’s power). They basically need massive nuclear expansion especially if electric cars become dominant.
nau 09:09 on 2019-10-09 Permalink
@Chris Well, as sure as I am about any “fact” I get from Wikipedia (which says 1983) and about my educated guess as to Kevin’s age. If you re-read Kevin’s original comment, you’ll see why I used that timescale. I agree that the Greens have made progress since 1983 (sadly, it’s been insufficient), but then perhaps one could also say that a couple decades of Greenpeace-style activism is part of why climate change is at the forefront now (though really I think it’s because people are no longer able to entirely deny the impacts staring them in the face).
Michael Black 09:46 on 2019-10-09 Permalink
Elizabeth May gave a speech aginst nuclear power in June of 1979 at tge Darlington nuclear power plant construction site. She was young, but she was already known for speaking out against aerial insecticide spraying in Nova Scotia.
The concept of the Green Party existed in Europe by 1979, though I gather not quite tge same form as when it showed up in Canada. I can’t remember when The Green Party first ran in Canada.
Wikipedia in Elizabet May’s entry says she ran with others in 1980 under The Small Party, environmental and anti-nuclear, which I know remember vaguely but had forgotten.
Michael
Kevin 09:50 on 2019-10-09 Permalink
@nau
Oh I’m deadly serious about wanting them to be effective. One of my kids is a literal poster child for Pour le Futur.
You don’t need to be in government to effect change (although the Green Party has been inept) but the environmental movement (like all protest movements) is locked into a broken meme:
1. Protest
2. ???
3. Change the world
If the only thing they’ve come up with step two “make the necessary sacrifices” then of course it will fail.
Where’s the Greenpeace carpooling app? Where’s the Extinction Rebellion manual for environmentally-friendly and affordable housing and HVAC? Where’s Greta Thunberg’s guide to calculating the most carbon-neutral method of travelling and eating?
It’s a massive movement, but it’s long past time they stop preaching to the choir.
nau 11:30 on 2019-10-09 Permalink
@Kevin
Well, I’m pretty sure that lots of people would consider carpooling, living in genuinely environmentally friendly housing and travelling and eating in the most carbon-neutral way to be sacrifices, so if “make the necessary sacrifices” is a guaranteed fail, as you assert, then I don’t see how your suggestions would lead us to a better outcome.
While the specific organizations/individual you mention have not produced the specific tools you mention, if you were to look, I think you’ll find that enviro groups have produced all sorts of such tools over the past few decades; it’s never just been protests. But the tools don’t change anything if people aren’t interested in using them. How does one focus their minds on the problem and its potential solutions? So far, all the methods have been ineffective. If methods that haven’t worked yet are to be abandoned, there’s nothing left to do.
But, now that we finally seem to be at a point where fear is starting to force people to take the issue seriously, perhaps the previously ineffective methods will fare better at getting people to actually act (perhaps not, I’m not optimistic that people will change before things are already too far gone, but defeatism definitely isn’t going to accomplish anything). If so, then it makes sense to move forward on all fronts, using both the methods you approve of and the ones you don’t, including protests that involve blocking traffic, which however it might be characterized, certainly isn’t preaching to the choir.
Michael Black 11:59 on 2019-10-09 Permalink
In the sixties tge big changes came really when people themselves changed, even if the rhetoric has tge anti-Vietnam war protesters claiming they ended the war.
Even in the civil rights era, things tipped because black people decided it was better to change than live as tgey had, discriminated against and often held there by fear .
So people moved back to the land. They became vegetarian. They decided simpler lives were better. The started businesses that were different. And so on. They wanted bicycle rights, because they rode bicycles, and oddly, Commun-Auto, making it easier to live without owning a car, was started by a big participant in Le Monde a Bicyclette if I remember properly. Phillip Berigan left the priesthood, but lived in simp!icity for the rest of his life, a religioys life that included getting arrested many times fkr protesting against war. Many people chose to live a simp!e life so they didn’t make enough to pay taxes, to avoid paying war taxes. Others, like Marty Jezer, got into solar power installing. He’s a good example, since he went from pacifist circles with a connection to tbe Yippies! to living on a commune in Vermont, which was kind of tge birthplace of anti-nuclear protest. One bit about tbat was that it wasn’t just anti, it was supposed to be about less centraluzed power, the interest in solar and wind being great at the time.
All if this gives decades of foundation for tge ykunger peooke, so it’s way easier for them to taje up tbings like bicycles or not eating meat, or simo!er lifestyles.
I’ve never driven a car, I’ve not eaten meat in forty years, I live prettty simply and buy a lot of things used. I choose, but it probably has more impact than protest. I know protest and my criticism comes frim observing first hand. I probably know much about human nature because of the people in protest rather than mainstream.
Once something gets big, it’s very different from individuals or small groups that protest. People can get carried away from being in that bubble of a mass. But it never really matters how big that mass is, but how the “outsiders” percieve it, since those “outsiders” aren’t the “enemy” but the people who need to ve reached.
Michael