Drones piloted by climate-change activists target Heathrow

https://www.economist.com/britain/2019/06/15/drones-piloted-by-climate-change-activists-target-heathrow

by prostoalex • 7 years ago

100 218 7 years ago

Off topic. I am getting a cognitive dissonance from the statements like "The airport is part of our national infrastructure...". Heathrow is owned by Heathrow Airport Holdings, private company.

farisjarrah• 7 years ago

You aren't wrong to be getting that cognitive dissonance. The more you think about it the worse it gets. The British Government spends loads of money on security and maintenance on the airport as well. If you talk about American Airports it gets even weirder. We have like private security companies that work with the TSA and Airports. So we have the public funding a private airport, which is a part of the national infrastructure, which hires private companies to run the things, which are defended and secured by public tax payer dollars.

peteretep• 7 years ago

So we have the public funding a private airport, which is a part of the national infrastructure, which hires private companies to run the things, which are defended and secured by public tax payer dollars.

In an ideal world, this is because the Government decided it would be cheaper to subsidise a private company doing it, rather than doing it itself. Whether or not this is true -- or indeed was entered into in good faith -- is a case-by-case sorta thing.

dTal2• 7 years ago

Privatize the profits, subsidize the liabilities.

Standard playbook.

roywiggins• 7 years ago

National infrastructure and nationalized infrastructure are not the same thing. Just because the airport was privatized in the 80s doesn't mean that it's not still part of the national infrastructure.

pbhjpbhj5• 7 years ago

Isn't the point that it's a really important infrastructure asset, but it's privately owned and so it's not _our_ infrastructure, it doesn't belong to the nation.

Like being a serf and having to rely on your local Lord.

gok6• 7 years ago

So are power plants and water treatment plants. Would you not agree those are part of national infrastructure?

sdinsn• 7 years ago

The fact that it's owned by a private company is irrelevant to it's importance. Furthermore, "national" in this context doesn't mean "owned by the government", it means "domestic".

sofaofthedamned• 7 years ago

Eh? Lots of things are part of the national infrastructure - the power grid (private), other utilities (private), energy generation plants (private).

Used to work on the same industrial park as a critical part of the national grid. Boy racers near there learned very quickly that you'll have a gun pointed at you for being there, and that's in the UK.

toss12• 7 years ago

Um, yes, this is a nominally capitalist nation.

In a socialized or communist nation, you would expect all national infrastructure, if not all means of production, to be nationalized, i.e., owned & run by the govt.

In a capitalist society, not only the means of production but many critical national infrastructure structures and services can be owned and run privately.

E.g., power & telecom companies are regulated monopolies. Some roads have been privatized so the company builds & maintains them, utilizing some of the toll money. Lotteries are often private companies running state-sponsored games. In the US, there are private prison operators. Many hospitals in US are private. And of course many of the airports are similarly privately owned.

Obviously results and benefits vary widely by industry and operation.

mort963• 7 years ago

In a socialized or communist nation, you would expect all national infrastructure, if not all means of production, to be nationalized, i.e., owned & run by the govt.

While the gist of your point is correct, I feel I should mention that socialism or communism doesn't necessitate that the means of production is nationalized and government owned. The means of production could just as well be owned by the workers, not the government.

inflatableDodo6• 7 years ago

Being private doesn't stop something being key national infrastructure. The UK's nuclear deterrent facilities are all farmed out to Babcock, for instance, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babcock_International and it would be hard to argue that isn't key national infrastructure. The UK just owns very little of its national infrastructure.

briandear2• 7 years ago

National infrastructure doesn’t necessarily mean government owned. The air traffic control system is also 51% private in Europe, but that’s still (inter)national infrastructure.

tomjen35• 7 years ago

So is a bridge that is privately owned and for which motorists pay a toll.

DominikPeters• 7 years ago

The article seems to suggest appealing to activists' compassion to avoid the risk of causing an accident. But it seems this can be much reduced by an announcement when the drones are planned to be flown (as in this case) and making the drones highly visible.

inflatableDodo6• 7 years ago

"Protesters plan a return to the airport—and there is very little the authorities can do"

This line is curious.

When was the first one? I mean there was the shenanigans where nobody was sure if there was even a drone, but there was in that case, as far as I am aware, no evidence for any activism beyond people saying that it might be activists.

I am dubious about this reporting. If someone can show me something from people representing the organisation, that is one thing, but so far I have seen this in the Evening Standard and The Economist, who are both quite capable of pushing a load of utter bullshit dressed up as news.

frereubu5• 7 years ago

Nothing huge, but it did happen: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/apr/19/extincti...

inflatableDodo6• 7 years ago

That example is just the same kind of protest that Heathrow has contended with since being built though. It doesn't say anything about drones.

Nerada• 7 years ago

The FOIA response said:
in all cases UKAB has no confirmation that a drone has flown close to an aircraft other than the report made by the pilot(s). Similarly, other than from the report of the pilot(s), UKAB has no confirmation that a drone was involved.

- https://www.airproxrealitycheck.org/uk-airprox-board-reveals...

msla• 7 years ago

And maybe I'm taking the news reports too literally, but... certainly the authorities have shotguns.

If this becomes disruptive, well, the aircraft are unmanned.

closetohome• 7 years ago

I liked the part about how they never actually found a drone at Gatwick, but "experts" (?) say there "probably" was one.

I'm curious what they're basing that on, and who's considered an expert on phantom drones (as opposed to Phantom drones).

Lendal• 7 years ago

I tend to agree. It makes no sense. If you're an activist, and you live in a democracy, why wouldn't you affect change more meaningfully by participating in the democracy you live in? Why would you buy something that itself has a carbon footprint (manufacturing, distribution) and that will only serve to politically damage the cause you purport to care about? What do you want people to do, fly only battery-powered passenger airlines? They don't exist. A climate change activist should know this.

dragonwriter• 7 years ago

If you're an activist, and you live in a democracy, why wouldn't you affect change more meaningfully by participating in the democracy you live in?

Attention getting stunts are an important method of participating in democracy, the primary and most effective form of such participation is influence campaigns, not voting (voting is a behavior influence campaig seek to guide, but an activist by definition seeks to have more effect through influence campaigns than they would have through their own vote.)

samcday22• 7 years ago

If you're an activist, and you live in a democracy, why wouldn't you affect change more meaningfully by participating in the democracy you live in?

You seem to be suggesting that there's a "right" way to participate in democracy. Instead of passing down armchair judgements about which forms are the wrong way to participate, could you perhaps suggest what you think would be a better alternative to what XR has planned here?

Why would you buy something that itself has a carbon footprint ...

I'm curious as to what point you're actually trying to make here. Why do people chain themselves to bulldozers to protest mass deforestation? Why do people perform acts of civil disobedience to protest nations fighting wars? Most of the time the people who are involved in those movements are fundamentally morally compromised. For example if you're protesting the Vietnam war and the general US war mongering as an American, you're doing this from a place of extreme privilege - much of which was afforded to you precisely because of the great success the US has in previous wars.

What do you want people to do, fly only battery-powered passenger airlines?

This is a bad faith interpretation of what the activists are trying to do. They're not protesting commercial air travel (although I'm sure many of them have strong opinions against our frivolous use of it). They're trying to wake people up to the fact that, while somewhat contentious, there's a pretty large (and growing!) consensus that we're utterly trashing our planet and hurtling headlong into catastrophe.

dorfsmay• 7 years ago

If you're an activist, and you live in a democracy, why wouldn't you affect change more meaningfully by participating in the democracy you live in?

Like what?

We have known about environmental issues for decades, paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to get politicians to foerum to tackle the issue and sign treaties that the next guy voted in just decides they don't care, etc, etc, etc... Companies with more money than all citizen environmentalist groups put together lobby politicians and organise disinformation campaign. What do you do when "participating in the démocratie" no longer works?

PhasmaFelis2• 7 years ago

Why would you buy something that itself has a carbon footprint (manufacturing, distribution)

This is a silly argument. It's impossible to live in the modern world without generating carbon. No one sane says we should stop entirely. People just want to reduce the impact to manageable levels. A single toy drone obviously has a tiny carbon footprint.

adrianN5• 7 years ago

What do you want people to do, fly only battery-powered passenger airlines?

Pay about $200 for each ton of carbon dioxide equivalent their flights blow into the air instead of benefiting from tax free kerosene.

Theodores• 7 years ago

What do you want people to do, fly only battery-powered passenger airlines?

There is a logical fallacy to what you are trying to say there. My advice - stay away from logical fallacies.

I am no fan of XR and their tactics. I recommend to anyone that they investigate XR a bit more to see what is going on with them. However, on this occasion they get a free pass from me, even if they are going to waste a lot of police resources with their publicity seeking.

The reason why I give them a free pass is because something has to be said about excessive flying. Rather than the facile black and white 'battery powered planes' nonsense, what it comes down to is this - excessive flying, by business primarily and also for tourism.

I know someone who flies every week from Scotland to London to sit at a desk doing green energy projects. This is absurd as it gets. He is not alone.

If your grandfather in Australia has died and the funeral is next week then I am not going to be berating you for your carbon footprint - you have got to go.

But, if you are hopping on a plane to go to an afternoon meeting in Europe from Heathrow and you are in the habit of flying on a weekly basis then you are probably overdoing it.

Many companies have merged to end up with curious company structures, so a team can be dotted out over several continents with several micro-managers having to jet around the world to have one to one meetings with their hires. It is all rather expensive but there is a whole class of people who just go around from one allegedly important meeting to another. They aren't the people doing the real work, they have people who don't fly for doing that. The people who aren't flying do all their communication over email, Slack and ye-olde-telephone.

We have all seen how these meetings go. There is a name for the culture that goes with this - 'jollies'. I mean, who wouldn't want a nice hotel for a couple of nights, the feeling of being someone that comes with being in a business class seat and everything expenses paid? It is all work and you can grumble about how gruelling the flight is and what a hardship it is to be away from the family.

I heard a manager once say how he had spent eighty hours flying that month. This was to deliver oral presentations for sales purposes. I appreciate sales have got to do what they have to do but this manager was doing old school travelling salesman stuff. The game really has moved on. Customer service on the web and the sales channels there is where the real magic happens, not with some guy shuttling around the world on a plane. If this manager had got his presentation out of PowerPoint and onto the web then he could have saved himself at least half his flying time. But no, some people are stuck in the past. Doing HTML is hard work and needs skill, going on jollies to present Powerpoint presentations is de-rigeur.

It is very hard to challenge the culture of excess flying in the UK. The people doing it have huge carbon footprints in the rest of their lives, with their homes, their cars and everything they consume. I know a weekend isn't peak time for business travel but activism often has to be at weekends because activists have jobs too. But, if XR do disrupt flying and that results in one sales person doing stupid flights thinking 'maybe I will put my powerpoint slides online and put together a really useful enquiry form' then that is a win.

alan-crowe2• 7 years ago

If you're an activist, and you live in a democracy, why wouldn't you affect change more meaningfully by participating in the democracy you live in?

Back in 2016 you could have pointed to the Brexit referendum as an example of meaningful participation. You could say to the environmental campaigners: copy UKIP, get the government to concede a referendum on shutting down Heathrow. Campaign in the the referendum. There are big problems with persuading enough people to win, but democracy works; if you persuade and win, Heathrow actually gets shut down.

Now they laugh at you. Even if you win the referendum, nothing happens. Then nothing else happens. Then the BBC uses a combat comedian to signal that you are fair game for acid attacks if you refuse to shut up about nothing happening.

The question of whether democracy in the UK is a sham splits into two questions. The split is analogous to the split implicit in the slogan. "Justice must be seen to be done." It is not really enough that Justice is done. Justice must be done in public, so that people can see that it is done. Similarly Brexit is complicated. Many people accept the politicians assurances that they are having difficulty doing something difficult. But that isn't really enough. We want to keep hot-heads on board with democratic politics. That required leaving on 29th March. We missed that deadline, and there will be adverse consequences throughout public life for many years to come.

gok6• 7 years ago

If the goal is simply to disrupt air travel, why not just call in a bomb threat?

frereubu5• 7 years ago

That would likely lead to a much more serious criminal charge because it's more closely related to terrorism. People who are arrested for making jokes about having a bomb in their suitcase when going through customs at an airport find out very quickly how seriously those kinds of things are taken, particularly in a country with a relatively recent history of terrorist bombings and a high state of alert for terrorist activity.

gok6• 7 years ago

So they're just taking advantage of the current legal loophole that bombs and drones are treated differently, despite the fact that they can be similarly dangerous to airplanes?

teachrdan• 7 years ago

Because they're not terrorists. Terrorists use violence (and credible threats of violence) against civilians to achieve political ends.

Instead, the activists here are disrupting air traffic using nonviolent means.

gok6• 7 years ago

They are most certainly terrorists. How is "I'm going to blow up an airplane unless you don't fly it" different from "I'm going to fly a robot into an airplane, potentially causing loss of life unless you don't fly it"?

How about "I'm going to aim blinding lasers at pilot flying a plane unless you don't fly the plane?"

briandear2• 7 years ago

That’s ridiculous. It’s disrupting air travel, no different than cutting the power to air traffic control. Protesters do not have a right to infringe on the rights of others to make their case. They can hold up signs outside the airport, but they have no right to put aircraft at risk. That is extremism.

mensetmanusman• 7 years ago

Planes can crash if a drone gets sucked in the engine, so it is a bit worse than a bomb threat actually.

brainpool• 7 years ago

Disrupting air traffic can definitely work towards political ends by beeing a credible threat to civilians. They are terrorists. Period.

freebear• 7 years ago

Air travel is such a non issue, for any person flying it will of course be a large part of their carbon footprint, but the atmosphere does not care where the CO2 came from.

https://insideclimatenews.org/sites/default/files/styles/icn...

landon32• 7 years ago

Side note: I just launched a web app for offsetting the emissions you havent been able to reduce— I’d love to hear what you think of it projectwren.com

Email is in profile if you have feedback, the goal is to get more people involved with reversing climate change

dev_dull2• 7 years ago

This is largely my problem with climate activism. It seems largely based on what's fashionable. For example, ban straws in SF even though all of the ones in the ocean come from another continent[1]. Also stop offering glasses of water because there's a drought (strangely enough the drought ended but of course the laws stick around)[2].

Now a new deal which, even if 100% effective, would only reduce global CO2 emissions by... 15%?!?[3]. To make matters worse, we're 12 years away from point of no return, but we're stubbornly refusing to build a new nuclear power plant even though things are so dire? It strikes me as unserious, happening only for show or other reasons.

1. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/06/90-of-plastic-polluti... 2. https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-aler... 3. https://cdiac.ess-dive.lbl.gov/trends/emis/top2014.tot

SomeOldThrow2• 7 years ago

What does this have to do with fashion? It makes sense to ban single use plastics.

What are your suggestions? 15% is leaps and bounds better than what anyone but Jay Inslee has suggested. Anyway that’s goddamn AMAZING for a single country.

Also, 12 years is the best case estimate. The worst case is in the past, and I’ve seen good qualified arguments for at most ~4 years before irreversible climate collapse with current technology (the figure I am citing is from speculation that high CO2 levels inhibit cloud formation, but I can’t find the source at the moment, so I encourage your own research to clarify my numbers). We need to try anything and everything in some reasonable order.

Fnoord• 7 years ago

Banning glasses of water is silly, given that beer, meat, bread, and soda all use more water than they give back.

helkafen4• 7 years ago

The plastic straw ban had almost nothing to do with climate activism, it's just a low priority measure to fight plastic pollution. These two issues are barely related.

macinjosh• 7 years ago

What's your point? According to your link aviation emits twice as much CO2 than long distance road travel. Clearly limiting long distance travel would have an impact. Doubly so if aviation was reduced.

Yet many global elites (Obama, Macron, et. al) agree to impose heavy restrictions on vehicle emissions used to feed, transport, and employ the average citizens of their countries. Meanwhile those who can afford it take needless trips across the globe to entertain themselves.

Air travel should be limited to those that have a reason to fly that out weighs the damage it causes to the environment.

nrb• 7 years ago

Absolutely not... who gets to decide what reason is good enough to fly? How about instead of reducing freedom we stop externalizing these costs, no matter their purpose or industry?

opportune• 7 years ago

I think aviation is pretty well-suited to carbon taxes/offsets. There are only a few major players and it would be very easy to enforce. Also I think the market would rather easily bear a 30% increase in flight costs

megaremote• 7 years ago

agree to impose heavy restrictions on vehicle emissions used to feed, transport, and employ the average citizens of their countries

Lets ignore all the other environmental costs of vehicles, roads, gas, refineries, deaths, gas stations, and the big one, city sprawl.

Cars are the single worst thing every created, and not just for the environment.

Veen• 7 years ago

The entire aviation industry accounts for about 2.5% of carbon emissions. If we banned air travel entirely it would do approximately nothing to reduce climate change.

The single best thing people can do for the environment is refrain from reproducing, but that's not quite such an emotionally appealing thing to protest about.

ShorsHammer• 7 years ago

Completely disagree. Airtravel has been consistently growing at 6% for a while now, there's still billions of people waiting in line to get easy access to it.

As your graphic alludes to short distance regional flights can be replaced with a greener alternative, but the vast majority of flights cannot.

Air travel is growing exponentially and we have no way to stop those emissions. Virtually everything else has alternatives, there simply isn't the energy/kg to move airplanes with anything other than petroluem products. Biofuels would be an even worse disaster.

ArtDev2• 7 years ago

High-speed rail is a great alternative to short flights. Sadly, the US has no high-speed rail due to the auto-industry.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qaf6baEu0_w

deevolution• 7 years ago

Surely there must be other less annoying ways to get people excited about helping the environment...

quadrangle3• 7 years ago

You'll gain a lot of perspective if you listen to this interview: https://teamhuman.fm/episodes/ep-127-extinction-rebellion/

Some tidbits: your comment is like saying "there surely must be less painful ways for your body to tell you to be more careful with a hammer"

In a trivial sense, it's true. But real pain and annoyance is exactly what it takes for people to prioritize dealing with a problem. These sorts of things are a healthy immune-system flare-up showing that we're not totally doomed.

The way to avoid such annoyance is to not have let the problem get as bad as it is in the first place.

sl1ck731• 7 years ago

I'd be curious if there is any correlation to people's daily routines being disrupted and then having any sympathy for the protester's cause.

I mean, who is going to get stuck in the air for an extra hour, land, and say "man, those guys are right".

At worst, it would just make me feel contempt for them. At best it just invigorates the people who already were on their side.

tomjen35• 7 years ago

Sure, but the less painful way of dealing with this problem is to charge them with terrorism and lock them away on life sentences. Sure others may try, but after a couple rounds of this, volunteers will stop. You can get young men to take great risks for great rewards, but not to rot in a prison cell somewhere with no hope of anything.

perfunctory4• 7 years ago

If you have better ideas I am all ears. I'm afraid we have already exhausted all other options in the last few decades.

neonate• 7 years ago

https://web.archive.org/web/20190614230149/https://www.econo...

see-ya-99• 7 years ago

It should be treated as a serious crime.

vixen992• 7 years ago

One serious accident and the activists will be hunted to extinction themselves.

leereeves• 7 years ago

Yes, Britain would surely consider causing a plane crash sufficient reason to declare them terrorists.

IshKebab2• 7 years ago

It is.

samcday22• 7 years ago

The level of negativity and hostility in the comments here is really disappointing to me. I agree that XR are definitely pushing the envelope on what we consider to be reasonable activism and protest.

However, I also think that the old adage "desperate times call for desperate measures" applies here. Yes, there are plenty of actions being taken to combat the damage we're inflicting to this little wet rock we all call home. But it seems obvious to me that there are enough people who think we're not doing enough that they are organizing and mobilizing in extraordinary ways.

Maybe some of those extraordinary ways cross the line. But who decides what the line is anyway? The people who are sitting at home typing out angry comments about how we should and shouldn't deal with the existential threat to our species? I hope not, or we're all doomed!

stubish2• 7 years ago

Looking at this from another country, I would expect nothing else except blow back. My first thought is are we dealing with idiots, a false flag, or trolls. If this is where 'desperate measures' has led too, they are better off doing nothing. This sort of strike action isn't going to get the general population to vote green, but vote fascist.

pbhjpbhj5• 7 years ago

It seems pretty effective (that's not endorsement) if you're talking about a small local protest from another country. Maybe they're actually not idiots but just people you disagree with?

dfawcus3• 7 years ago

Such actions are covered by the UK definition of terrorism:

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/11/section/1

samcday22• 7 years ago

Out of interest, are you a lawyer? I'm really struggling to see how you can interpret the language of the page you linked to include non-violent activism. Could you tell me specifically which sections of that legislation you think apply here?

switch007• 7 years ago

Yes, the greatest issue with that piece of legislation.

samcday22• 7 years ago

Not sure if OP or anyone else who thought along similar lines will see this follow up, but I was mulling the original comment over some more and I know why I reacted so strongly to it.

When I think of the word terrorism, and I'm sure many others think like me, I think of 9/11. Or the Las Vegas shooting. Or one of the many horrible bombings in various parts of Middle East, etc.

Those are acts that have no pre-warning, and are designed to inflict as much pain and suffering as possible, and to cause as much fear and, dare I say it, terror as possible.

What XR are intending on doing is abusing an obvious outcome of notifying civil aviation authorities that a dangerous object will be active in airspace where civilian commercial airflight is taking place. The outcome being flights are grounded and redirected, causing a lot of inconvenience to people and costing the economy potentially millions of dollars.

I think XR believes it's a 100% obvious thing that by notifying the appropriate authorities well ahead of time, all planes will be safely rerouted or grounded. If there was even the slightest chance that their actions could cause a plane crash, then I firmly believe XR would not even consider such an action.

So yes, I understand we have actual legislation that could very reasonably be used to charge the people responsible for the plan at Heathrow airport. The problem is I think that the legislation in question was designed to target something very different. If activists from XR are convicted of charges stemming from the "Terrorism Act", it becomes perfectly reasonable to label those activists as terrorists.

But then what we've actually done here is placed activists who never had the slightest intention of causing grievous harm to other people (loss of life, massive economic damage, etc) into the same category we reserve for extremists who have perpetrated genuine atrocities. That just seems completely wrong to me.

If we want to bring about legislation that criminalizes certain forms of activism that go "too far", then fine. I think even that could be a perilous path, but I can make my peace with it being necessary. I would just hope we stop and ensure everyone is on the same page that we're categorizing these people as something like "activists who went too far" in order to distinguish them from "extremists who carried out attacks that we as a society consider utterly unthinkable and terrifying".

2muchcoffeeman2• 7 years ago

Maybe some of those extraordinary ways cross the line. But who decides what the line is anyway?

Probably the people you inconvenience.

A bunch of vegans disrupted traffic in Melbourne, Australia recently. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-04-08/melbourne-vegan-prote...

I don't think they made many friends.

It's really hard getting someone to change their mind or their thinking about an issue. But I firmly believe actively making enemies is probably not the way to go about things.

If I worked in Melbourne on that day, I would have eaten a revenge steak.

samcday22• 7 years ago

I don't think they made many friends.

I don't think they're interested in making friends. They're interested in trying to persuade more people to stop eating the flesh of sentient creatures when our diets don't even require it.

It's really hard getting someone to change their mind or their thinking about an issue.

I agree.

But I firmly believe actively making enemies is probably not the way to go about things.

I disagree. Pretty sure there was lots of enemies made when women demanded the right to vote. Or when African Americans demanded to stop being segregated. We take a lot of things for granted as "obvious" now, but they're only obvious because enough people stood up and said they don't really care for your feelings.

If I worked in Melbourne on that day, I would have eaten a revenge steak.

I think that says more about you than it does about the vegan activists.

NeedMoreTea7• 7 years ago

The interesting thing to me is since the long Easter weekend of XR protests in the UK, opinion polls have shown them rising in popularity and environment polling higher too.

XR are not interested in making friends, but causing enough disruption to get government to treat the issue seriously, in the manner of civil rights and universal suffrage actions. They've certainly increased awareness and discussion. That they actually seem to be making friends by doing so would seem a surprise bonus.

Not only that, the signs are it's working, as change (insignificant tokenism, but nonetheless a step) has already achieved. Between XR and the school strikes parliament has actually declared a climate emergency, and even prospective Tory leadership candidates have declared positions on zero emissions. I don't expect the Tory party to actually do much, but it's a hook on which further legislation will be hung as XR and others are aiming to make it impossible to ignore.

askvictor• 7 years ago

One objective may be (or may at some point be) to cause enough economic damage that certain ecologically damaging activities are no longer economically Portugal. Start working on economic terms and governments and corporations start to listen.

civility2• 7 years ago

[...] or we're all doomed!

When are we all doomed? Can you put a date (year) on it?

samcday22• 7 years ago

I'm going to assume you're joking here, this definitely made me chuckle :)

wtdata11• 7 years ago

However, I also think that the old adage "desperate times call for desperate measures" applies here.

If they were really into desperate measures, their actions would be targeting China (you know, that country that now produces more CO2 than all the Western countries combined and that is set to keep greatly increasing it during the next decade), not the only set of developed countries that actually did something and greatly decreased their CO2 emissions in the last decades.

samcday22• 7 years ago

I see your point, but I disagree.

The people involved in XR are British citizens. If they were to go to China and start performing acts of civil disobedience, they'd simply be deported (or worse).

Instead, they're trying to effect change in a place where they're afforded civil liberties to do so. I don't claim to speak for that movement, and maybe I'm not even thinking along the same lines as they are, but I would guess their hope is that if they change their home country then that example will help to influence other nations.

rhblake• 7 years ago

Per capita, which seems like a more fair comparison, plenty of Western countries produce more CO2 than China; the US and Canada each produce about twice as much.

dorchadas• 7 years ago

To be honest, I'm about 100% certain that ecoterrorism (terrorism to protect the environment) will be the next main type of terrorism. And I think it's going to start happening much sooner than anyone things.

And, truthfully, I can't say I blame the people.

JustSomeNobody2• 7 years ago

Pissing people off is not a very effective way of getting them to be sympathetic to your cause.

Also, I’m sure a good number of people flying are already worried about the climate but they still have to get where they’re going faster than a week.

StavrosK• 7 years ago

As a drone enthusiast, I'm not super excited about the impending outlawing of drones because some people are idiots. I want to be able to enjoy my hobby, but I won't be able to if these people get drones outlawed.

tomohawk2• 7 years ago

Whenever a group seeks to get their way by interfering with the rights of others, because what they are trying to achieve is "too important" to worry about such "petty" concerns as people's right to freely travel, engage in commerce, and generally pursue happiness - it's time to watch out. Recent (past 200 years) history is filled with example after example of how tragically this ends.

This is not civil disobedience. This is actively attacking other people and putting their lives at risk.

Groups such as this are not doing anything noble, and they do not deserve any admiration, respect, or protection.

IshKebab2• 7 years ago

Do we not have a right to clean air? One could easily argue the most of the population is interfering with my right to breathe clean air and enjoy normal weather.

subjectsigma2• 7 years ago

The level of negativity and hostility in the comments here is really disappointing to me.

A group of people acted like irresponsible fuckheads and got negative pushback? What a concept.

From what I see, successful protests were based around unifying actions. Who was ultimately more impactful, the Black Panthers or MLK? Which one promoted a message which split people into groups, and which promoted a message that unified people and promoted empathy?

Flying a drone into airspace is not only irresponsible because to puts lives and property at risk, but it does nothing to promote the cause because it divides people into two groups - the people affected by delays, and the people causing those delays.

ArtDev2• 7 years ago

This is the exact type of short-sighted activism that steps the movement back; not forward.

If you treat regular people like the enemy, expect to be treated as such.

However, if you go into it calling attention to an issue using humor and goodwill, more people might join your cause.

These people are idiots and remind me of PETA.

lsd5you• 7 years ago

You don't seem very convinced about your own alternative though do you? More people might join your cause? And maybe they won't. Yet you may be right that they are setting their cause back. In which case there are no answers. We carry on, destined to be governed by crisis.

alan-crowe2• 7 years ago

There is a great analysis of the issue you raise in the essay The Toxoplasma of Rage at https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage...

perfunctory4• 7 years ago

One thing must be pretty obvious but reading the comments it seems like it's not. XR is very explicit about being non violent. I don't believe they would do anything that would endanger the safety of the passengers.

brokenkebab• 7 years ago

Flying drones close to busy airport is endangering the safety of passengers.

alpaca128• 7 years ago

Is it? The airport is forced to block all flights, which in turn prevents danger to passengers. That's the whole purpose behind the drones.

samcday22• 7 years ago

I think the problem here is many people have heard that statement, but are choosing not to believe it. Instead they're reaching for UK legislation and straw mans to paint XR as a bunch of eco-fascist terrorists.

The only thing that gives me some hope is that generally when someone does something that provokes a ferocious response, it means they've really struck a nerve and gotten people's attention.

magwa101• 7 years ago

"Very little they can do", really?

perfunctory4• 7 years ago

FWIW https://twitter.com/ExtinctionR/status/1140269676989231106

Drones piloted by climate-change activists target Heathrow

Related Stories