I appreciate the energy of the climate strike, especially on the youthful end, even though it interferes almost as much with climate action as with opposition to it. The perils of blunt instruments. Hopefully a bunch of them will go on to more directly useful things.
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I have less than zero trust in the motives of the core older instigators (younger ones like Greta are doing fine for their age), but also pretty confident that the very low effectiveness and controllability of impact of blunt instruments like strikes will mitigate that.
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Overall, from point of view of involvement in the technocratic end of trying to act effectively, things like this feel like they pump energy indiscriminately into the issue, with a slight, but net helpful bias towards positive climate action, 51% of the energy helps, 49% hurts
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The 49% is everything from green washing and plastic straws and diluting attention on random big tent social justice stuff, and of course the inevitable enabling of power-tripping wokeleban carpetbaggers.
But the 51% is helpful pressure in support of meaningful things.
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It builds up pressure to act. It moves the Overton window. If you’ve been working hard preparing options for years, it gives you an opening — so long as you can tap into the energy without letting the pollutant bad (in both a technical and malicious sense) ideas contaminate work
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There’s an element of shock doctrine thinking in how to actually do climate action. Whatever you think of Naomi Klein, she’s right about the pattern. And about the fact that bad actors have *also* in general been waiting for the same openings as good actors.
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An active mass movement is like a natural disaster. Like Katrina. A short, intense “may the best crisis capitalist win” Hobbesian power struggle.
Such shifts will never be clean, well-governed and run by only the good guys by *any* definition of good. Prepare to fight for yours.
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Btw I’m mostly humblebirging from minor supporting roles in gigs which have given me a ring-side view of several different theaters of climate action over 5 years. I claim no big efforts or selfless sacrifices myself. I’ve just witnessed a bunch close up.
