So the meme is in agreement that defacing Stonehenge as a protest was pointless?
There are ways to get attention for a cause without defacing one of the seven wonders of the world. Next time spray that cornstarch in BP’s corporate parking lot.
Man, the way this channels a mix of "it is the children who are wrong" and sheer impotence is hitting me hard. I mean, it really explains so much about modern activism.
The only protests I agree with are the ones that don't bother me, are out my way, and have no impact on actually changing things. Also any form of action from a protest should be stopped by the police.
And nothing was done in the way of ending capitalism. Asking "pretty please stop using oil we will paint things" to a capitalist government is ridiculous. The only way to end emissions is being us the ones who control the industry.
So, from my point of view was a useless, possibly counter productive, action.
stop oil are industry plants they were founded by the daughter of an oil exec they're designed to make the real people protesting look crazy by lumping them in
From my experience capitalism and climate activism are incompatible ideologies. Capitalism is entirely, without a doubt, entirely focused on the bottom line. If it doesn't make them more money and/or costs them more money, they're against it. That's why something as universally bad as smoking took so long to be essentially outed as a problem, and something people should actively avoid. Just watch "thank you for smoking" for more detail on that one.
Cleaning up factory emissions and by-products/waste, doesn't earn companies any money. It's the right thing to do, but it's far easier and cheaper to simply dump the raw waste into the environment. Whether thats chemical runoff, or toxic fumes, or carbon emissions, etc. To safely collect and dispose of the by-products is an expensive process.
Any efforts from companies that are "green" is either that they can offer you a marginally less-bad (environmentally) product at a reduced cost to them. Whether that is because they passed those costs onto the consumer, or because the "green" alternative is actually cheaper, is the only question. As soon as the "green" alternative costs them more and they can't justify an increase in product cost for being "green", they simply won't do it. Anything outside of this scope is simply a PR stunt to try to gain favor with the more environmentally conscious consumers to try to pull them away from their current brand loyalties, over to your brand.
Pretty much all pr stunts of this sort are one-offs, to give the illusion of making an effort, while doing essentially nothing actually helpful.
Unless they can somehow make a profit from "saving the planet" then they won't do it. It's against their very nature.