How Not To Protest Against Climate Change

Members of Insulate Britain block a major highway. 
Climate change activism is good. Doing it stupidly like
this is not. Mind your PR! 

 British motorists and the general public are incensed over a climate activist group called Insulate Britain and I can see why.  

The basic goals of Insulate Britain are fine. They want the British government to insulate subsidized housing as a way to increase fuel efficiency and cut down on the use of fossil fuels to heat these buildings. Plus, it would save money for the people of modest means living in these buildings.

This won't in itself solve climate change, but it's a noble enough goal. Every little bit helps. 

It's Insulate Britain's tactics that are infuriating and counter productive to say the least. These activists have been marching out onto major highways and blocking and snarling traffic to make their point.

As you can imagine, this has led to dangerous situations, as irate motorists try to drag Insulate Britain members off the highways and onto the curb and out of the way.   Then the activists run back onto the road and block traffic. Rinse and repeat ad nauseam

You just know a road rager will eventually, tragically run over these demonstrators

And for what? Insulate Britain is not winning hearts and minds. They're just getting people angry. They're making people less likely to want to do something about climate change. 

 There is of course a place for civil disobedience in the climate movement.  It's worked well in other activism, with civil rights in the 1960s among the most familiar. 

To put it bluntly,  you need the right PR to gain a sympathetic ear to your campaign and to change the hearts and minds of the public. Rosa Parks' refusal o sit at the back of the bus was technically illegal, under completely unjust Jim Crow "laws."  But her refusal to bow to this racism was both dignified and plainly right, and that was one of many example of how the civil right movement propelled itself forward.

The Insulate Britain clowns appear not to have learned this lesson. 

As the Independent points out, Insulate Britain members think they have no choice other than to block roads to make their case.  Lobbying, voting, leafleting, making speeches and such have not worked for them.  

A spokesperson for Insulate Britain was quoted by the BBC saying, "In 10 years' time when fuel crises are catastrophic, when the food has run out and people are experiencing unsurvivable heatwaves, what would you be wishing you had done now?"

There's a lot of problems with that statement.  Though the effects of climate change are dire and getting worse, all credible science that I've at least read don't paint quite that dystopian a picture in just a decades' time. 

Secondly, Insulate Britain is doing nothing to inspire the general public to take up the fight against climate change.  If things are as hopeless as this group says (Spoiler: They're not) then nobody is is going to sign up for such a lost cause. 

Thirdly, pissing people off is not the best way to get new activists to come on board with their movement. 

By the way, stopping traffic and causing hundreds of cars to idle and spew CO2 into the air needlessly during your hours long protest doesn't exactly do much to slow climate change does it? Just a thought. 

This is one type of climate protest I hope doesn't spread.  

Be an activist for stopping climate change. Get in peoples faces if you have to. But do it intelligently.  Remember, we need as many people as possible to be on board and effect change. The good kind.