Examples include Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion here in the UK.
Personally, I think some charities are groups are genuine in their outburst wanting large firms to stop strangling the natural beauty for profit, however for me there is a red line that can be crossed.
Blocking roads preventing medical care, people going to work, interview and possibly a nice vacation away. This doesn’t really help but make the public look at your group in a bad light.
The same can also be said when attempting to destroy priceless art for a cheap publicity stunt knowing it’ll get clicks on social media.
TLDR - I think some groups are genuinely good whilst others are just shouting in a speakerphone, pissing everyone else off.
What do YOU think?
I think blocking roads and publicity stunts are ineffective, but there’s plenty of actually effective stuff you can do, like tree spiking or sabotaging oil infrastructure. I don’t really care if people want to block roads or throw soup at paintings but I don’t think it’ll achieve much. I guess better than doing nothing. But with the draconian punishments people are getting in various countries for this sort of protest, it really doesn’t seem worth it when you could do something that’s also criminalised but actually directly does something to prevent climate change.
Personally I don’t like how a lot of the XR-related groups are so ideologically wedded to nonviolence, to the point where they condemn and actively oppose others on the left they deem “violent” (which is usually just racialised people who acted in self-defence at a protest). I see that as a bigger problem than ineffective protests, because they’re actively withholding solidarity from those who should be aligned with them.