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  • Showing only topics in ~enviro with the tag "violence". Back to normal view / Search all groups
    1. 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...

      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.

      38 votes