Imagine being so touched in the head that you make questioning climate science your entire personality. Fossil fuel companies aren’t going to fuck you, you can stop being their bitch.

Steve Brodner

I think we should be listening when athletes actually have the courage to speak up, but from personal experience you see just how annoyed the administrators are, and there's a huge power imbalance. The administrators of a lot of these sports are from the big end of town, they are rubbing shoulders with the executives of all of these fossil fuel companies, and I think when it comes to fossil fuels we should be having this conversation. Should fossil fuels be allowed to try and prop up their dying social licence at a time where clearly we have to accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels. The reality is it is less than 5 per cent of sports sponsorship that we're talking about when it comes to fossil fuels and clearly, I think, fossil fuels need sport more than sport needs fossil fuels.

David Pocock, former Wallabies captain and now independent senator

Where is the Accountability for the Killers Ushering in the Climate Apocalypse?

Today’s climate crisis dwarfs the 1940s threat of Nazism, the 9/11 attack, or the massive bank robberies that took place during the Reagan & Bush administrations. It threatens all life on earth… By Thom Hartmann/ hartmannreport.com/ May 25, 20 Image by Pete Linforth from Pixabay If somebody had set your house on fire, killing your child and pets, and then your city demanded that you give that…

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Ex-UN climate chief has 'lost patience' with fossil fuel industry

The UN’s former climate chief said Thursday she had “lost patience” with fossil fuel companies and that they should steer clear of crunch talks in Dubai if the industry refuses to be part of the solution. Speaking at the “Climate Changes Everything” conference on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, Christiana Figueres, among the key negotiators of the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement, said…

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Climate Camp is back – and it’s trying something new

“She explains that Climate Camp Scotland is hoping to channel the traditional positives of climate camps: bringing activists together to forge relationships, prefigure different ways of being, and launch large-scale direct actions. But she underlines that all of this must be in service to the deeper mission of building solidarity with communities on the front line of extractivist systems.

“Quan, another spokesperson, agrees: ‘What CCS does differently from many other climate camps is that relationship-building. It’s a fundamental part of our theory of change that the fossil fuel industry creates these sacrifice zones. People sometimes forget that we have these zones in the Global North. But these are some of the poorest areas in Scotland – and we need to work together with these communities.’

“Both speakers emphasise that this is slow and long-term work. Quan – involved in CCS’s outreach efforts – outlines that there are just a few main front line zones in Scotland. It’s CCS’s plan to offer close commitment to these few places, eschewing the temptation of novelty in favour of continuity.”

DW debunked disinformation in circulation about renewable sources of energy.

After the debunking segment, they looked into where the disinformation was coming from and who kept recirculating it. Rightwing think tanks funded by fossil fuel companies play a significant role. Of course far right politicians also add to the mix of Earth-hating crap.

It was cool to see a factchecker listed in the credits for the vid at YouTube.

Also in the credits was a link to The Debunking Handbook – written by scholars at 20 universities in 5 countries. The handbook, first written in 2011 and updated in 2020, is published in 18 languages in addition to English.

Debunking Handbook 2020

i just dont really understand why theyd target les mis? and like. its interrupting the work of actors and crew and house staff who dont have anything to do with fossil fuel corps. people who just paid to see the show who dont have anything to do with it.

i understand les mis is a show about rebellion and humanity but to me it doesnt make any sense.

( i say this as someone whos probably very unaware and very slow to realize the deeper meaning of things so i apologize if it comes off snobby i am just confused !! /genuine )

I'm very sorry if this comes off as rude but like.... "I don't understand why people would use Les Mis as the symbolic centerpiece of an act of protest/rebellion against the government" is just a very strange thing to say, and I'm genuinely not quite sure how to begin to respond XD. Like....it's literally Les Mis. It is Do You Hear the People Sing. The original novel was written to be a political rallying cry, it was written to bind together activists, and it has been used that way thousands of times since its publication in 1862. It's Les Mis, I don't know what else to tell you XD. Also I know this next comparison isn't perfect, but:

“I don’t understand why Les Amis interrupted Lamarque’s funeral.  Obviously I agree with Les Amis’s goals, but was this really the right way to protest? Obviously the government is doing something bad— but was this symbolic event really the right place to talk about it? Why even choose to interrupt this event, and the lives of the workers leading it and everyday people attending it? It wasn’t responsible for what was happening! 

Okay, yeah, I get the funeral is ‘symbolically significant.’  I get that Lamarque has become, in popular culture, a symbol of rebellion and resistance against a government’s unfair policies.  I get Lamarque’s funeral is a pretty big public event that has a lot of symbolic significance ties to ideas of rebellion against the state.

I get that Lamarque’s words are often seen as a rebellious call to action, so illegally interrupting his funeral could be a statement about resisting tyranny. It could be a call to action playing off the popularity and symbolic role that Lamarque has in the public consciousness.

 But at the same time— shouldn’t Les Amis have just gone to the palace and attacked the king directly? Why disrupt this symbolic event instead? They’re not really going after the people responsible! 

After all, there were so many people there who just wanted a normal day. They weren’t responsible for what the government was doing and had nothing to do with it.  They wanted to see the procession, to hear Lafayette’s speech and grieve a political figure they cared for. They wanted to hear people praise ‘resistance’ in the abstract, without actually doing it.

 Weren’t Les Amis disrupting that?  

Aren’t Les Amis bad activists? Isn’t disrupting people’s everyday lives for the sake of 'activism' always inherently a bad thing? I’m not against activism, but isn’t doing that kind of disruptive activism rude? Isn’t disrupting the lives of ordinary people just doing their jobs or going out for a special event evil— no matter why you’re doing it, or what your goals are, or whether the government actually is doing something vile that we should start to stage great events rallying against?

Even if this Lamarque's funeral has special significance because of its symbolic pop cultural ties to rebellion against tyranny—shouldn’t they have just avoided rudely interrupting some regular people’s everyday lives? 

Protests shouldn’t disrupt things. they should be big parades that don’t make anyone uncomfortable, don’t interrupt anything, and don’t disrupt any aspects of ‘normal people’s daily life.’ No one should ever target symbolic events— like a funeral for a political figure or a musical about revolution—  to make a political statement. Protests should be little quiet festivals that cause absolutely no interruption in everyday life so that we can all just safely ignore them, until the climate catastrophe they’re warning us about arrives.”  

“It’s the same idea as an insurance company raising your property insurance rates because you engage in risky behavior, like drunk driving. But in this case, it’s the fossil fuel sector that’s engaging in risky behavior by contributing to climate change.”

Greta Thunberg was arrested after joining hundreds of protesters who gathered at a five-star hotel in London on Tuesday morning to denounce a meeting branded “the Oscars of oil”. ... Addressing journalists before joining the protest, Thunberg said: “Behind these closed doors at the oil and money conference, spineless politicians are making deals and compromises with lobbyists from destructive industries, the fossil fuel industry. “People all over the world are suffering and dying from the consequences of the climate crisis caused by these industries who we allow to meet with our politicians and have privileged access to. “The elites of the oil and money conference, they have no intention of transition. Their plan is to continue this destructive search for profits. That is why we have to take direct action to stop this and to kick oil money out of politics. We have no other option but to put our bodies outside this conference and to physically disrupt [it].”

Over and over, richer countries have not met existing climate funding commitments of $100 billion a year. They’ve also not met promises around raising funding to support developing countries adapt to climate impacts. This has left many countries and communities more exposed to loss and damage. Because they’re unable to put money into easing and adapting to climate change, and build up their ability to withstand climate impacts. We need to see richer countries move beyond promises of climate funding. Countries and companies with a history of polluting should pay up for the harm climate change causes. Starting off with fossil fuel companies. The fossil fuel industry has repeatedly obscured the science, lobbied against change, greenwashed their image and more. All while the rest of us suffer with high energy bills and the devastating climate impacts their industry has caused. To put climate justice into practice, governments must make fossil fuel companies pay up. And put that money into the loss and damage fund, and other climate financing they’ve promised.

‘Loss and damage: who foots the bill for climate destruction?’, Greenpeace