Do you think climate crisis will lead to violent activism?
This is a topic that's been on my mind for a while, and I wonder what people think about it.
As everybody knows, climate crisis is worsening, is going to continue to worsen, yet the pace of reforms is not nearly enough. "Faster than expected" has even been a meme for years. What's more is that we are very hastily nearing the 1.5 Celcius degrees limit IPCC and countless other climate scientists have been warning about (For details, check out IPCC 1.5oC special report, and IPCC AR6).
Another point is that oil and traditional energy companies, their politicians, and other people working for them have done irreversable damage to humanity and many, many other species of life. Yet, generally speaking, courts don't seem to hold them accountable.
In short, there's a good deal of reason to doubt legal structures will solve the climate crisis fast enough or hold people accountable for the most part.
I suspect this might lead to "violent activism". For example, human ecology professor and activist, Andreas Malm, wrote a book calling for such action. In the book, "How to Blow Up a Pipeline", he contends that non-lethal violence, meaning sabotage, is a necessary and complementary element to peaceful activism, in order to make people in power unable to ignore this issue any longer, and make the peaceful protestors seem the "reasonable alternative", strengthening their hand. This book seems to have found some popularity among a certain crowd.
Another, less specific but still noteworthy example is the growing violent feelings among the young people regarding climate crisis. Many of them are utterly jaded to the reform process, and are openly or semi-jokingly calling for violence.
I suspect we are nearing or maybe even passed a threshold, which will lead to the rise of violent activist groups, quite possibly in the current decade. However, I'm not sure about this, as predicting the future is a very uncertain thing. What do you think, and what are the reasons behind your opinion? I'm interested in how events like this play out in human history, and I feel like, either way, we are going to witness some very important developments.
I don't think we're in for "violent activism" anytime soon. Across the world, the amount of people with that kind of climate anxiety is pretty low. Renewables are on the rise and the second derivative of emissions is getting to be negative in many countries as green politics becomes more mainstream, but it's only just getting to mainstream.
I think we'll continue as is, political support for renewables will continue to marginally increase as things get materially worse, and we'll turn things around with probably 4-5 degrees of warming, which will cause many places to be inhabited and many millions of people to die, but over a fairly long period of time, so people will just deal with it.
Before I reply to the core of the comment, I want to point out that 4-5 degrees of warming is extremely unlikely, even if current policies were to stay and no improvement be made. Here's a graph explaining it, and here's the full article.
I also want to say that I'm trying to get opinions, so I won't try to go against the assumption in the first paragraph, that there isn't that many people around with climate anxiety in the world. While I have my doubts about it, I will accept it as true for the sake of the argument.
I don't think this kind of action would need many people, in percentage, to happen. George Floyd protests in USA, for example, had 15-26 million people participating.. Population of USA at 2020 was 331,449,281, which means that around 4.5-7.8% of the population participated in the protests. This makes it quite possibly the largest protest in US history (check the previous link for this claim), with not even 8% of the population participating. Point is, even extremely large protests are a handful of people when compared to the general population.
Now contrast this to sabotage or something similar. Protests need many people to make an impact. However, acts like sabotage don't. Only a small amount of people would suffice, which makes it attractive to people who are in this mindset. I think this is why it's very unlikely that violent activism won't happen.
I mean, if would count something like the George Floyd protests, then sure, I could see something of a similar scale happening with climate, if nothing else than stochastic chance.
But like the George Floyd protests, I think it'll be mostly isolated, violent by happenstance, and ultimately peter out without accomplishing anything, which isn't really the vibe of what your OP was saying.
The thing with climate change is that it's quite literally a slow burn, so you get the frog in boiling water effect. Additionally, there's no clear thing to be violent against - it's a very nuanced, complicated topic.
The internet also helps; I think the internet has made heavy-hitting protests very difficult. Internet organization is the path of least resistance, but it always leads to ineffective, pointless movements which do more gesturing than action. It takes out political energy and accomplishes nothing of use with it.
Just out of curiosity, have you been a regular part of protests for at least some time in your life? It's basically every single activist's experience I talked to that internet made it much easier to organize things in real life. Hell, not only activists, it even enabled lone wolves.
It seems to me like you rather focus on online protests (and maybe ranting), but its information sharing abilities enabled many real life protests. BLM and Floyd protests, Arab Spring, Hong Kong protests, recent Iran protests, 2019 protests in Lebanen, Chile, Colombia, Bolivia, Venezuela, and many more protests utilized social media to a great deal to organize. Not only resistance movements, but January 6 in USA was also organized on the internet. It has an enormous capability for this stuff, and that's why governments around the world are trying to monitor and control it.
I think @stu2b50’s was that “heavy-hitting” protests are harder to organize on the internet. Not that protests in general are.
I think we will see violence once climate change starts changing the “carrying capacity” for humanity on Earth. When famine hits, droughts cause mass dehydration deaths, or certain areas are too hot or cold for humans to live, widespread violence will occur. It will be localized mainly to the areas where resources are scarce, but mass migration will pressure the nations that are hit the least to take action.
My money is on the second major crop failure inside of 5 years. Nothing sparks violence like hunger.
It already has, although on a small scale. Ever heard of Wiebo Ludwig? He was convinced that the sour gas well flares near his property were causing stillbirths and genetic defects in both his farm animals and in some of the babies born in the area. One of his own grandchildren was stillborn and several of his 'flock' had miscarriages.
He protested long and loud but generally got ignored as a nut and dismissed by the oil companies. Until gas wells near his place started getting blown up with explosives. Then they suddenly paid attention.
And it got twisted: "At a January 1999 bail hearing, the lawyer for Ludwig and another defendant revealed that RCMP officers had bombed an oil installation as part of a dirty tricks campaign during their investigation of acts against oil industry installations. The information was confirmed by crown prosecutors."
In the end he served over two years on multiple charges. In the mean time some teenagers came onto his yard to harass him and his family and one of them, Karman Willis, ended up dead of a gunshot that appears to have richoted and hit her in the chest. Police couldnt determine who shot her and no one was ever charged with her death.
It's all pretty weird and sordid. But since Ludwig's death things have been quiet around that area.
Wait the police and prosecutor admitted that they had completely made up one of the crimes just to pin something on him, and that wasn't the end of the trial? Then he ended up getting convicted? How the hell does that happen?
I believe we'll see violent protests at the secondary effects of climate change and clumsy policy attempts to control it.
The sometimes violent "Gilets Jaunes" protests in France were triggered by the imposition of a carbon tax on diesel fuel, as well as rising gas and electricity prices. The diesel tax was particularly onerous for rural communities already disposed to distrust the Macron government, and the overall policy agenda tended to overburden the least wealthy.
Ecuador saw massive riots when its government abruptly cut off a substantial public subsidy for household fossil fuel use.
2023 saw often-violent protests in many countries over food and fuel inflation. Globally, staple food prices have increased by as much as 50% since 2020, which is making governments in low- and middle-income countries nervous about the prospect of food riots.
Mexico City is one delayed water delivery away from a wholesale crisis. Mexico is experiencing drastic climate burden, with temperature excursions as high as 5 °C above normal.
Are riots "violent activism", in the terms of OP's question, or just desperate reactions that can be steered by populist or reactionary forces? I'd argue the latter. It's clear that mass and social media sources have been bought up by those who have vested interests in preventing climate action.
The offenders are thoroughly defended and their physical infrastructure is mostly distant from the people who are well-informed, resourced, and passionate enough to act. The U.S. Keystone pipeline protests started on remote Native American territories largely outside major media coverage, allowing surveillance and Federal government-mediated suppression for many years.
I'm not a doomer, but I think the gradual pace of change, diffuseness of climate events (until they get very dramatic), the ability of malign actors to manipulate the narrative, and the entrenched political power of fossil fuel industries make this a long game.
Just popping in with a recommendation for The Monkey Wrench Gang by Edward Abbey, a classic fiction of eco-terrorism. It's from 1975 and still rings true today. I think violent activism is already upon us, just in places we don't often hear about or see.
Honestly people are already getting upset about climate change, it’s just that they don’t connect their anger towards the effects with the root cause.
Honestly, I'm mostly surprised by the answers and their upvoting ratios so far. It's good to get different opinions, which is why I created this thread, but it seems to me like most people on Tildes don't pay much attention to this stuff. Which is telling! Because it points toward areas of improvement.
By violent activism I didn't mean violence done to activists, but activists using violent methods. Also thanks for the book suggestion!
Yeah, that's fair. I was highlighting the murder of activists to show how there is already violent suppression of activism - state sponsored suppression of activism - so without a big push I'm a little pessimistic we'll see a big change there.
I'm actually in favor for Abbey style intervention. You often need a physical threat to have bad actors actually take a seat at the negotiation table. Water rights, usage, and planning have only gotten worse since the Monkey Wench Gang came out.
"The Ministry for the Future" by Kim Stanley Robinson has a bunch of amazing ideas in it. One was that no-one used private jets anymore, because they got blown up a lot. Such a hopeful book, recommended.
I think we've already been seeing a steady increase in violent protest, opposition and property sabotage for years, and I expect it to continue to grow at a comparably steady pace, as more and more people decide they are no longer willing to work within the bounds of "acceptable" political processes, and as more and more governments criminalize peaceful protests.
The list of new(-er) protest groups is growing steadily ... Extinction Rebellion, Scientist Rebellion, Last Generation, Just Stop Oil, Climate Defiance ... that's just the handful I have bookmarked, I'm sure there are others.
My favorite to date is the Tyre Extinguishers, who deflate the tires of gas-guzzler SUVs, and then stick leaflets under the windshield wipers to let the owners know why they've been vandalized.
Property sabotage like this, I think, will continue to become a larger and more central role in the climate crisis struggle.
Now, if you mean intentional violence against people, assassinations, bombings, etc ... I don't believe we will ever get to a point where targeting people will become widespread. There were, are, and always will be outliers, of course, but the concept of violent eco-terrorists actively targeting oil company execs and pro-fossil fuel politicians ... I think that will always remain (mostly) in the realm of fiction.
No, not generally, because greenhouse gas emissions are the cause, not the symptom, and causes don't generally get widespread protests, symptoms do.
The BLM protests were about police brutality against black people, but police brutality against black people only exists because of the existence of anti black racism and systemic urban design issues, which is caused by a huge number of factors, almost none of which were the target of the protests.
In the same vein, CO2 in the atmosphere is not something any large group of people care about. They care about heat waves, brownouts, crop failures, starvation, inflation, low wages, immigration, and lackluster natural disaster response, all of which are directly caused by climate change in some form.
Those are the things that will get violent uprisings and protests, not climate change itself.
Technically speaking we are already at the violent activism stage. In Europe people glue themselves to the road in the cities to block traffic. I call this violent - no blood spilled but it is already (negatively) mixing in to the lives of other people.
The question is though - how would it help to the cause? I mean I understand we should do something, I'm not thinking "yesterday was too late", but I still believe there are things that could be done. But instead of trying to kill ICE vehicles, what about trying to help with being green in toher less developed parts of the world? Would it really do so much difference if my new ICE car has all the newest emission standard when there are rolling coal trucks basically everywhere in >drop a name of less developed country here<?
This is global thing and it should be done globally. Not by top countries of the world alone, but these top ones helping to those at the bottom to make a better world.
And yet here we are, people thinking that glueing themselves to the road will save the planet... This is not the constructive thinking that is needed here. And more (or real) violence wouldn't help either.
But to somewhat answer the question - there will always be people among every group that may and probably eventually will act violently in the name of their cause. It won't help the cause, it may even hamper it, but they will do it anyway in their blind belief.
You'd be surprised how quick the comfortable middle class gets infuriated by mild inconvieniences and demands the stripping of rights eliminate the inconvieniences.
Every transit worker strike I hear from the commuters about how striking should be illegal for transit workers. Rinse/repeat for nurses, teachers, frieght workers, and Amazon warehouse workers.
Blocking traffic, especially on freeways, has a great multiplier effect. It's probably the best single nonviolent protest move you can make.
It depends. Well, actually, it as great effect! The thing is what effect you are after. Do you want to change the world or do you want people to hate you and your cause? It may easily become violent from both sides - drivers running people over or blockers throwing rocks on cars.
I understand when workers (of any type, be it drivers, nurses, teachers, doesn't really matter) strike. I support them even though it may cause inconvenience for me for a day (or a few days). I want my kids to be able to go to school and learn and get the stuff I need to buy them (say for school). I even want better future for them considering environment. I have quite a new car, I try my best at sorting out my waste (glass, plastic, paper etc.), I say ok for wind/solar. But also for nuclear.
I think I'm kinda realistic in my thinking - Europe can't save the world. It can show how it may be done, but on its own, it can't do it. Even if US join in, still can't do it. And glueing yourself to the road won't change that. It may get you run over by a car, not the future you want. (I'm not speaking about you specifically, of course)
It is good to point at problem, but if you approach it thinking "if I burn all the oil in the world, it can't be used to power things thus reducing emissions" you may not reach the outcome you wanted in the first place. Maybe (XY problem)[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XY_problem] describes this a bit? Where you want to do some action that will not actually solve your problem?
I hope my thought comes along - there is a problem that should be dealt with, but it should be done thoughtfully, not hot-headed.
I think the main issue with that approach is that it only works in a theoretical world where we all get along. Yes, a global, thoughtful approach is the correct way to go... But unfortunately there are a lot of powerful, entrenched actors who do not want any of those thoughtful approaches because they would hurt their profits or their power base.
How do you perform a meaningful, thoughtful action if it gets sabotaged by those with more power and resources? I'm not necessarily giving a free pass here to eco-terrorism or anything, but rather discuss why people feel the need to do this. They are powerless and frustrated, and they feel like their future is being stolen.
Thoughtful approaches have been advocated for decades, and steadfastly ignored. Yes, there is progress, but it is too little, too late, too slowly. Any sensible, thoughtful solution that has scientific concensus right now is no longer about preventing climate disaster, it's about mitigation, it's about dealing with the looming death and displacement of millions. Hotheaded action is never desirable, but... One does start to wonder how bad the crisis needs to get before we stop being polite to those actively and knowingly destroying our future.
That's why I think non-lethal protests should aim at pipelines and off shore platforms and private jets and infrastructure for industries and the 1%, not things that inconvenience folks just trying to get to work so they can stay alive
Actually, many pro-violence activists would agree with you. They would say that pacifist protests aren't doing enough, and that's why intidimation tactics, sabotage, etc. are necessary.
I don't agree at all that holding traffic is violent. It's an extreme stretch of the definition. It's just a mild annoyance. However, it creates problems for the government, which forces them to pay attention. If people are annoyed by it, then that's very much intentional. The intention isn't to make friends but force people in authority to recognize the issue. A political movement is never homogenous, and different tactics accomplish different goals.
Per the book by Andreas Malm I mentioned, sabotage really does hurt the targets. Which is why it's been done for thousands of years. Also threat of violent eruption creates pressure on the authorities to act. For example, after MLK's asssassination people started burning down cities, which resulted in the Civil Rights Act of 1968 passing. The links I provided cite sources that show that government feared further escalation, and that's why it had to pass it. The book I mentioned cites such stuff too. In other words, burning down cities directly resulted in major benefits gained.
From the book, another violent campaign that worked is the suffragette bombing and arson campaign in Britain and Ireland.
The book also makes a point to mention that even pacifist civil rights activists were protected by armed members against KKK.
I think the book presents a strong argument for the claim that both peaceful and violent means can be complementary to each other.
(and I say this as an atheist)
Everyone hated Jesus till the Romans tacked him to the cross.
"Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword."
Matthew 10:34
The idioms are just so damn useful, and also being able to quote it helps sway those "God is a Republican" types.
I thought everyone loved Jesus until the religious leaders begged the Romans to tack him to the cross?
Not trying to argue about the text but curious about your view re this conversation. Like, are you trying to say activist leaders like MLK will be hated until there's a martyr, and then minds will be changed and then folks will posthumously make them beloved heroes?
In the case of Jesus, he was (to the best of my knowledge) seen more as a nuisance than a messiah during his lifetime, and went from maybe a few thousand followers to the hundreds of millions today. Had he not been a martyr, he probably would have been forgotten with all the other cult leaders that have come and gone. And the hatred (rather than indifference) was more from the (political and religious) leaders at the time.
Hated is a strong word, but martyrdom does have a tendency of transitioning indifference to fervent support among non-supporters, as well as enraging the supporters.
From what little I know this century though, that kind of ferver won't last. People got bills to pay and mortgages to work for - we'll need more than death of a good man
I struggle to think of another historical figure that sparked a movement or powered structure change that went on for more than a couple centuries, especially one the requires a different way of life or upsetting a power? Even Mormons seem to be basically just Americans doing their own thing. Westero baptist "Church" came and went; kool-aid cult, moon cult....even the Holocaust with millions murdered, we still have genocide supporters.
I don't think we will see a sea change in attitudes towards climate collapse, from the death of one man or even a million people.
I think that it's possible. However, I don't think it is good.
My theory is that promoting the idea that collapse is somehow impossible to mitigate or that we are on an irreversible track towards doom, and that things will only be worse in the future unless there is fighting, is bad, especially for young people, and it is normalizing an attitude zero-sum behavior. It prevents effective social, political, and economic change from really happening because people become convinced they don't have the agency to build a better world, only that they can destroy what is around them that they don't like.
Solar geoengineering, weather engineering, net-zero carbon cycle, etc are all actionable paths that one can go down to increase probabilities of easing our collective eco-anxiety, and there are people on the frontlines of this. For instance, look at what Rainmaker is doing to fix droughts with cloudseeding, what Terraform Industries is doing to make cheap nat gas from air and sunlight, what OceanBit is doing with ocean thermal energy conversion and ouroborosesque heat reintegration.
It's always easier to tear down than it is to build up. But I think the better future is in building vs in fighting. And when we fight, we tend to lose track of (or dismiss) 2nd and 3rd order consequences.
For instance, oceans got warmer over the past few years after we regulated out polluting sulfur fuel from cargo ships, because the sulfates in the air were reflecting the sun light and keeping the water cool. It turns out atmospheric SO2 is extremely effective at increasing albedo, which reduces surface and sea temperatures! The outcomes of this termination shock were discussed by people in climate forums well beforehand, but it was largely dismissed (and even at times, attributed as bad faith and malice) by the wider community, a dissonance of the 2nd and 3rd order effects occurred. My fear is that the climate is a complex system, and fighting is counterproductive to mitigations. Building is productive.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-how-low-sulphur-shipping-rules-are-affecting-global-warming/
There are several points.
First, there is no assumption or argument in the post that this is a question about collapse. It's about preventing further damage (aka deaths and suffering) as much as possible. So, I'm sorry, but the premise of your reply is based on a misunderstanding.
Second, there is a very real conflict between people hurt by climate crisis and oil companies, their politicians, etc. You can't go around every conflict. You can't outsmart or outsocialengineer every conflict. This is such a conflict. Already we are paying the price for not taking down these people before.
I dread every summer now. They are awful. Once I got a heat stroke so bad, simply because I walked outside during noon for half an hour, that I couldn't sleep for several days. Not even a minute. I also had a fever that wouldn't go down, and my whole body felt like it was dying. Even under usual conditions, I get no respite even during the night.
And I'm one of the lucky ones. Thousands of people die during heat waves each year. Millions and millions of people face a water crisis each year.
Quite frankly, it sounds like you never experience such summers. You probably live in the developed world, you probably have a car, and you probably have AC even if the temperatures are high. I think, in such conditions, it's very easy to say such incrementalist things and not give alternatives serious consideration. Without having lost much and without much to lose, it's very easy to be an incrementalist.
Many people with much more to lose cannot afford waiting. It's a quite significant question of suffering for many people, and it's even a life or death situation for many people. We cannot afford to wait.
Third and last point is that the argument that says violence never effects change is demonstrably wrong. See my comment here.
My doubt is in quick drastic actions, such as linked above, the removal of sulfur fuel from cargo ships that directly led to ocean warming faster due to decreased albedo. Good intentions with bad outcomes.
The fix to that issue is incremental building, adding something else to fuel to re-increase albedo (such as sea salt, which is readily available in the water.)
We saw this over China's clean air progress as well:
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3262641/cleaner-air-china-causes-sudden-warming-north-america-study-finds
I’ll push back on this idea by pointing out that maybe both are needed — those promising new technologies may never be adopted if entrenched fossil fuel interests wield their power and influence to maintain the status quo; so by actively working against entrenched interests, you’re pushing them aside to make room for these emerging technologies to have a place, where they might not even have a place at the table otherwise