> It's still too little too late.

Thats what the activist blockading my commuter train was hysterically screaming too.

When you are packed 3 deep and 3 high on an electic train being screamed at that you are personally destroying the planet (by taking this train to work?) it brings the climate wars home.

> When you are packed 3 deep and 3 high on an electic train being screamed at that you are personally destroying the planet (by taking this train to work?) it brings the climate wars home.

Had the displeasure of meeting some of those activists as well. While I don't support their means of protest (in Germany the constantly glue themselves onto the street) I understand their message. However, considering the activists blocked a packed tram line that is powered exclusively by renewables, I'm not sure if they themselves understand the issues completely.

Gluing yourself to a tram or the street in 2022 is having zero (positive) effect. The transition from fossil fuel to electrictiy and clean forms of electricity has been happening for a decade plus now - maybe the greenpeacer of the late 90's can legitimately claim credit. No policy maker is seeing these activists at work and changing their mind about anything.

The offshore wind farm opening in 2023 is not a product of that activist gluing themselves to something, and the one planned for 10 years from now is not either. The train, towards clean electricity and near zero oil is in motion, has been for quite some time, and the only question is how fast it is travelling.

I would love to see it move faster, and certainly anyone actually pulling the strings of investment are looking at a coventional power plant vs renewables and throwing their money at renewables faster than people can take it. It is only amongst the chattering masses and everyone having their voice heard on twitter that there is much debate.

Hm, I'm not on the side of those annoying activists, but I think your assertions have no ground.

Existence of "extremists" usually helps "moderates" make things change. Without the "extremists", the "moderates" ARE the "extremists" and will not be taken seriously. It reminds me of how without the Black Panther Party, some white moderates would have not accepted propositions from Martin Luther King.

I think that wind farms and renewables would not be there if there was no pressure from extremists that helped deciders realize that wind farms and renewables are not just a whim from few ecologists.

> the greenpeacer of the late 90's can legitimately claim credit

They were swiming against the tide - today they are swiming with a pretty rapidly moving current.

> wind farms and renewables would not be there if there was no pressure from extremists

Wind farms and renewables that exist today because someone in June 2022 glued their hand to a road. They are the product of research and development and planning under corporations and governments 3/4/5 leaders ago. In the context of the UK - 2014 for consent to build Hornsea which started delivering power in 2020. With each successful phase they keep asking to build more, it is the success of the project that had them proposing part 2 and now in 2022 part 3. The person glued to the pavement can claim Hornsea 3 is their doing but personally I dont think they are moving the needle at all.

If you could build a wind farm, and sell off 50% of the interest in the project for what it cost to build - you would be planning the next one as well.

https://www.offshorewind.biz/2022/03/28/orsted-divesting-hal...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hornsea_Wind_Farm

Nobody is pretending that today's wind farms are the result of someone gluing their hand to a road in June 2022 (the fact that you are framing the discussion as if it is the case is not a good start). But it is incorrect to say that it's obvious wind farms would have happened without people doing similar things in their time. Maybe you are too young, but people doing similar things as people gluing their hands today existed way before 2014.

You take Hornsea, it is a good example: projects from industry in UK existed for a long time, but were unlocked only due to European Union promotion and subsidies for renewable energy, which itself would not have existed without the need for Germany to boost renewable because they decided to go out of nuclear, because of the ecologist protests in 1980-1990. Hornsea is the result of the 2010 European Union push for 20% renewable, and would not have existed (at least not as early) otherwise, because EU funding was, obviously, a really good incentive. Before that, there were wind power industry pushing for projects in UK (such wind power industry groups exists since 1970), but they were not very often taken on board by the UK government. Also, Hornsea has deemed economically profitable because it used efficient technology created due to the push for renewable that was in general a political move due to pressure of ecologist protests.

So what? is having annoying activists make it less true?

People will grasp at anything to avoid confronting harsh truths and personal responsibility.

We are facing an existential threat to civilization itself, but some kids have thrown some soup at a painting so I guess our hands are tied now...

you are personally destroying the planet

I'm highly skeptical of your story. I'm 99.9% even the most tone-deaf activist would not block an electric train, if the objective of their campaign is to replace cars with trains and bikes. I find this hard to believe.

Plus, how do you even blockade a train?

You jump on the roof while your fellow activist glue their hand to the side. 14% of those activists polled were down with it, not 0.01%.

"A poll on the Extinction Rebellion Telegram chat showed 86 per cent of members were against action targeting the London Underground. Just 4 per cent approved of the action, while 7 per cent approved if they could be sure trains wouldn't get blocked underground."

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/breaking-angry-commute...

Well I stand corrected. How do people like this even exist. What's the deal here, false flag or useful idiots?

I believe the idea was that the commuters were going to jobs that destroyed the planet. I can only assume that philosophically they were ok with people taking public transport to work, but they disapproved of the jobs they were going to.

To add context, in greta’s climate book there’s a whole narrative on how the climate and sustainability crisis is a consequence of the current global economic model that incentivizes consumption and growth, so people that are on their way to the financial district and therefore probably work to support that model would be considered enemies of the planet by those activists. Their mode of transportation would be immaterial to that.

They’re not in favor of communism either by the way, they want the global economic system reformed to become sustainable and they consider the job of doing that a responsibility of the powers that be.

Having annoying activists is unavoidable, especially as long as we also have climate change deniers or climate emergency underestimaters, and therefore, we should learn to not be deterred to still do the right thing.

People opinions on what actions are probably similar to Gaussian curves, with two consequences: 1) you may be situated on the mean value, but you may not, and you have almost no way to know (personal assessments are so biased they are worth nothing) 2) it is unrealistic to expect that no one will exist on the left or on the right of you. There will always be annoying people that will go too far. As long as those are agreeing on the climate emergency problem, considering that they are a problem that need to be solved is just a waste of time. Just live with it.

If it makes you feel better, you may even consider that the existence of those annoying activists is the consequence of the lack of action of people who are downplaying the climate change emergency. If the second ones don't exist, the first ones would not exist too.

That diagram only shows waste heat when converting to electricity.

So if fossil fuels get converted to electricity it shows the roughly 50% loss, but if they're used in cars it doesn't show the 80% loss.

Electrifying everything makes a big difference, so much so that people quoting primary energy figures rather than final energy (the stuff we actually use to do stuff) are liars.

And this diagram, which is misrepresenting transport fuel as if it was final energy is also misleading for similar reasons.