this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2024
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Same as going to see whales or a rhinoceros. Why not spray paint an elephant? Cut down the biggest redwood tree! I mean there are PEOPLE who are starving!
Relics of humanity AND nature AND all the stuff in nature belong to everybody, not just rich assholes. Wrecking these things to draw attention to other topics is peak entitlement.
Please tell me where I said it's ok to travel to go check out whales and rhinos? I'll be the first one to tell you airplane traveling should be limited to essential travel and tourism is a major environmental problem.
It's funny because you used two examples of damaging living things while these people are intentionally "damaging" non living things in order to make us pay attention to all the living things we're letting suffer.
I picked living things intentionally because there are people who will put more value on heritage and "stuff" than those lives. For example, if I had to choose between the very last rhino and the Great pyramid, I wouldn't pick the rhino, stonehenge or all of the orangutans is a different discussion. Even any one person weighed against some objects (or other species) is not a cut and dry discussion. It's totally shitty to think you get to pick what's more or less important for everyone.
The first time an activist jumps through a plane engine will get a lot more press and is better targeted, and I don't mean that in a casual / flippant / dismissive way. A spree of vandalism to aircraft engines or supply lines would also do a fine job at a lower cost. People won't stop traveling because one monument gets defaced temporarily or permanently.
Then I would tell you you'll be in the wrong side of history because you can save all the stuff you want, once there's no one to enjoy it it will all have been worthless, saving living things so something survives us is much more important.
You've created a false dichotomy. There is no need to trivialize shared treasures or heritage in pursuit of any cause in order to save anything or anyone. You've decided in some Machiavellian twist that whatever cause you think is truly just is more important than anything other people might value.
It is absolutely important to protect our future, ourselves, and the life we share the planet with, but not by throwing tantrums with unrelated collateral damage. Fight for the climate by fighting for the climate, not by desecrating churches/monuments/art/nature in some weird plight to accidentally piss off the right people and get more TV time.
Good luck making an omelette without breaking some eggs. You're just pushing for the status quo, find me a single revolution that achieved major societal changes without collateral damage.
You break eggs because you need eggs. There are casualties of war because civilians and infrastructure are near the opposing force. There's a word for doing that stuff when it's not necessary: war crimes.
Find me a single revolution that was won or significantly enabled by defacing a heritage site or a priceless work of art as a core tactic.
I mean, I don't want to scare you but we've lost tons of objects that would be be considered priceless if they still existed today in every single revolutions. Do you really think that France got rid of religion in its institutions without any destruction?
https://fresques.ina.fr/picardie/fiche-media/Picard00439/les-destructions-dans-les-eglises-pendant-la-revolution.html
The American civil war led to the destruction of tons of buildings that would be considered heritage sites today if they were still standing.
No omelette without breaking eggs, stop protecting the status quo, you're one of those who will be most affected by all that's coming, only the super rich won't have to deal with climate change.
And I don't want to devalue the cause because we are on the same side of it, but those bits of destruction are still legitimately incidental and not central to the cause.
To put this another way, let's suppose that we stop climate change in as sound a way as we responded to CFCs and the hole in the ozone layer. Two years later, in support of women's rights, St. Peters Basilica is destroyed before lent. In support of trans rights, angel falls Venezuela is irreparably dammed on the cliffs before earth day. To bring awareness to police brutality the following year, the main chambers of the Great pyramid is collapsed.
It is all just stuff. But if your unrelated cause is justified in doing actual damage (which I know didn't really happen yet), why not the next cause? Sure, climate change is an existential threat so maybe there is leeway, but it won't be the last one. I see that you find it important to make sure we protect where we are going, but I also think it's important to protect where we have been. It's not something to be taken lightly or for the sake of "awareness" to destroy our own history.
On the one hand, the roaches may be all that's left to enjoy our history; on the other hand, if the people and nature are all that's left and our history is gone, I find that only marginally better than having not existed at all.
Well, you go tell that to the people who will lose their home because water levels are rising and some places on earth are becoming uninhabitable.
The crisis we're facing will make all these historical things seem extremely meaningless and all the time and money spent preserving them look extremely irresponsible.
I hope you'll remember this conversation when millions of people are dying trying to migrate to habitable land and when biodiversity reaches record lows and you're unable to feed yourself properly because of what we did to this planet, I'm sure at that point you'll tell yourself "Hey, at least resources were used to make sure the Mona Lisa stays good looking!"
I say that as a person that actually studied history in university.
The last reply I will have here is that by messing with unrelated stuff, you ARE NOT guaranteed to solve the problem or even improve it. This Stonehenge business is totally extraneous. It has nothing to do with anything. If it were permanent, it's destruction for its own sake. What is more, it's an implicit green light for more and worse variations of this sort of vandalism or destruction going forward.
If we all make it through, YOU remember you thought it was worth it for the sake of a sound bite and 2 more days in the news for awareness instead of even trying to address the actual problem: airlines, shipping companies, cruise services, coal plants, etc etc etc.
Fucking up history for news hits is stupid, selfish, and ultimately not even particularly effective.
So with all of that, you never understood the point of doing acts like these.
Goodbye.
Nope! I think it's stupid and entitled and I'd rather distance myself from it and from you. So happy trails!
But how is that action going to stop the water from rising. I am too very much concerned with climate change but I don't see much point in those actions. They don't really bring anything to the table nor have any impact on the matter, apart from antagonizing people to the issue perhaps.
The point of their action is to show people's hypocrisy and to make people angry at the leaders of the world who will call it a scandal while they're doing nothing about the destruction of the world itself.
It looks like the goal will be more people getting pissed at the climate activists. Which will make it harder for those who are actually doing something more then just publicity stunts.