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RE: I Wish I'd Bunked Off School Today
The best protest is $$ boycott of products and companies which destroy Mother Earth. That, and sharing factual information about poor practice, & safe climate-friendly alternatives. No amount of placard waving & wagging school changes things if people keep buying their crap.
Exactly. I do know that many kids, including my boy and his girlfriend, do boycott and refuse plastics and so on. The kids are often far more on it than we are. And this protest is just a part of a wider action that needs to be taken - many of them know that and it's not as if this is the ONLY thing that they have done or considered. I just really believe that no one has the right to supress their voice in the name of an education system that is part of a wider social malaise. In terms of 'education', I think placard waving like this can invite conversation about what can be done to change things in other ways too. I don't think 'not buying cotton' stopped the slave trade.
71% of global emissions come from 100 companies:
http://fortune.com/2017/07/10/climate-change-green-house-gases/
and
individual responsibility is not enough to stop climate change:
https://theclimatelemon.com/individual-collective-fixing-climate-change/
So the beginning is to stop buying from all those 100 companies. Eg I NEVER buy from amazon or nestle & a whole pile of others. Individual responibility is the ONLY thing tbat will ever work - just a LOT of people need to step up.
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But you can't buy out of the system. As the second article points out, a huge part of our footprint is from the systems - infrastructure, etc. - that we can't just not buy. Ergo, we have to make the decision-makers do what we want. And the first article will show you how much of that is energy production - if you're boycotting one brand but buying another, it still takes energy to make and ship to you and so forth. It's a much bigger hit when cities pledge to go fossil fuel free or we close down a coal plant and so on, which only happens with public pressure - like protests.
You can - and I am - progressively extract yourself from "the system". Believe you can't and you're right. Im less & less convinced protests change anything other than resistance & a lot of noise.
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Whether you extract yourself or not, those systems are still being built, it's not a matter of how participatory you are. You can believe protests don't accomplish anything, but the data shows otherwise, when they are sustained and popular enough.
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Agreed. But not the only thing. Education matters. Public awareness matters. Vocal, loud and disruptive voices CAN make a difference.
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