"The intention is entirely to cause a scene. And it's worked, because everyone knows about them now, "
Well it's true that I know about them, but my opinion of them tends to drop everytime I hear the next thing they have done and when trying to persuade people to move away from comfortable conveniences I would have considered 'any publicity is good publicity' as a risky concept.
I think it depends. XR and Greenpeace have a very clear message, and even if people get ticked off at what they do, I think that bad is outweighed by the fact that everyone talks about the climate now. And quite a good deal more people care about it now than before. Remember the suffragettes were considered terrorists in their day, but they were very effective at getting women the vote, since, well, women have the vote now.
Insulate Britain, on the other hand, I think are doing a terrible job and your reasoning here would more than apply to them. But that's a bit off-topic.
And again, I am a firm believer that with the right system change, the average Joe won't have to make any changes to their daily lives that will drastically reduce their quality of life. With system change we can make the alternatives just as comfortable, perhaps more so, at the expense of those who again I believe have had it too good for too long.
I would say for me, these activists have done more harm than good.
What's your reasoning for that? Remember, the aim isn't ultimately to make everyone love them, they are not political parties. Their main aim is to raise awareness of the issues, and even though your opinion of the activists themselves is low, you clearly do care about the issues, and this will be the same for many others. People are much more aware of the problem now even if they resent the people who gave them that awareness in the first place.
Good news is, if anyone's been following Brian Cox's documentaries, it's a complete non-issue anyway - these problems are short term in a universal sense and are not going to last. (nor are we, or the milky way for that matter). If you really want to put a sticky plaster on this terminal condition lets work on the overpopulation thats demanding so much consumption.
Your first point is of course tongue in cheek - it would probably be better for earth as a whole if we all just went and shot each other in the head right now - but of course we as a species instinctively want to survive just like any other species.
Your second is one way of looking at things - although it is worth noting that 'overpopulated' countries often have their residents living very sustainable lives. China for example, the world's worst polluter and arguably the most overpopulated nation (or one of them at least) actually has a much smaller emissions and consumption per capita than the UK, for example. Of course that is in no way a defence for the significant impact that their industries have on the world's carbon footprint, it's just worth noting that if some of these overpopulated nations could be made sustainable through their industries, they would have rather low levels of contribution to climate change, overpopulated or not. However, there are certainly other climate-based issues with overpopulation such as food supplies etc. They will really start to cause a problem once we start feeling the effects of climate change more strongly in the next few decades.
