And if all their demands were met today - or let's say the UK ceases to exist today and doesn't emit anything anymore - how would that impact climate change?
Last time I checked the methods of measuring temperature via satellites was not percise enough to even account for that scenario. It's like stealing ten people's drinking water so that you can put out a big forest fire. Knowing it will not at all impact the forest fire but it will sure as hell make the ten people angry. And then celebrating yourself for doing something. It's beyond stupid.
They're almost as bad as the ones in Germany who glued themselves to the streets and then couldn't show up to court because they flew to Bali. These people are seriously something.
> Given a choice between a Stuttgart court date or a sandy, balmy beach in Bali, it’s clear how most people would decide.
> Now Luisa and Yannick, two young radical German climate activists, are learning to their cost that they may have made the wrong choice.
> Last September in Stuttgart the two participated in a climate protest by the group Last Generation, gluing their hands to a city street and blocking traffic beneath a banner reading: “Save oil don’t drill.”
[…]
> A Last Generation spokesperson told Bild: “They booked the flight as private persons, not as climate protectionists. That must be kept separate.”
That's a pretty ridiculous argument for a couple of reasons.
1. Vandalism of art does nothing to advance dealing with high CO2 levels. The problems with CO2 have been widely reported. It is a major issue in most major democracies that comes up for debate in most major elections. So it is not going to do anything measurable to raise awareness of the issue.
2. The same argument works for anything that does less harm than our current CO2 levels. If I protested CO2 levels by going around slapping babies, would that be an acceptable form of protest? Slapping a few babies, even hard enough to cause some brain damage, causes less harm than CO2 levels being too high.
I take the climate seriously and do my part to minimise how much of my footprint contributes to fucking around with the chemistry of our atmosphere. It's clear that changes to CO2 levels will change our climate in ways that will have global sociopolitical and socioeconomic consequences.
There is no reliable evidence[0] that CO2 has an effect on human cognition or on "society." High indoor CO2 levels aren't bad because of the CO2, it's bad because it's a marker of poor ventilation. And poor ventilation has many consequences for the chemical makeup of that air.
Last time I checked the methods of measuring temperature via satellites was not percise enough to even account for that scenario. It's like stealing ten people's drinking water so that you can put out a big forest fire. Knowing it will not at all impact the forest fire but it will sure as hell make the ten people angry. And then celebrating yourself for doing something. It's beyond stupid.
They're almost as bad as the ones in Germany who glued themselves to the streets and then couldn't show up to court because they flew to Bali. These people are seriously something.