Vox: How radical should you be when you're trying to save the planet?

[OKIsItJustMe]

2. No bet

This does not appear to be an attempt to demonize protestors.

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I saw a video recently of some climate activists who were in Washington, DC, where I live, and they were blocking traffic. People were walking up to them and saying, “I need to get to work.” I mean, these people were really upset. Do these kinds of actions help or hurt the cause of climate activists?

The people who are actually doing this type of confrontational activism — which I’m calling in my new book “activism to shock,” and I use the term “shockers” to refer to these activists — these shockers are actually trying to shock the general public into paying attention to the climate crisis. Now, is it going to piss people off? Absolutely. And there’s lots of evidence of that. But one of the things that we know from the research is that while specific actions in specific groups that engage in these more radical tactics tend to turn off people, research shows that it does shine light on the climate crisis and actually draws attention to and support for more moderate groups and more moderate forms of activism. So in the broader movement, it may be quite effective, but for these specific activists and the tactics they’re using and the groups that they’re working with — and I know the groups that were blocking traffic recently here in DC — it’s completely unpopular.

Well, what would they say? If you asked them, “Was that successful when you guys blocked traffic?” Is the answer, “We got media attention”?

The answer, they would say, is, “Absolutely.” They really want the conversation to start with their activism and continue into the climate crisis. They’ll basically say, “We tried going to a legally permitted march, we tried carrying signs, we tried going to our elected officials’ offices.” And I can tell you from data I’ve collected that they do all of those things. And what they’ll say is, it doesn’t work. It’s not gotten the attention. It hasn’t helped change the conversation. But sitting on the street or gluing myself to the tarmac — when the media starts to talk about it, it helps us to start to have these conversations about what’s needed to address the climate crisis.

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For example, I don’t see them making a comparison to the “eco-terrorism” of the past.