Insulate Britain finally gives in.

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After weeks of endless motorway blockades, warm and cuddly Insulate Britain have finally decided give it a rest for the time being. Strangely this coincides with the first time they were seriously challenged by motorists and the courts inches away from jailing then.

Best time I guess it'll be best to jump out of your cars and drag them off the road as it appears to work.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-58910278.amp

I see people who do this as totally thick because their protests effect people who have nothing to do with what they are protesting about. To me that is a sign of a sheer lack of intellignece.
If one wants to protest, the protest has to hit the very ones who can make decisions. Without that the protests will just cause anger and rebellion against the protestors and no one will want to have anything to do with cause evenif they agree with it because they are being targetted as the victims of the protest and they are not guilty.

The protestors are absolutely stupid to block these roads.

I see people who do this as totally thick because their protests effect people who have nothing to do with what they are protesting about. To me that is a sign of a sheer lack of intellignece.
If one wants to protest, the protest has to hit the very ones who can make decisions. Without that the protests will just cause anger and rebellion against the protestors and no one will want to have anything to do with cause evenif they agree with it because they are being targetted as the victims of the protest and they are not guilty.

The protestors are absolutely stupid to block these roads. If they had any sense they would direct thei protest to those who are directly making the decisions and do it in a friendly healthy non violent manner, so thei protest will be respectfully recieved and taken seriously.

Britain is too rich.
Here, people insulate homes simply not to pay that much for warming them.
Don't you?

This is a popular opinion, but one that completely misses the point of what these protests are designed to do.

Directing protests at the people who are in control of decision making (i.e. the Government) doesn't work. Greenpeace and many other organisations have been trying this approach for decades, supported by all the evidence and with general public support. Action on climate related issues has been woefully inadequate throughout.

What Insulate Britain and others have done is to go back to history books and look at times when large, systemic change has been achieved. Changes like those achieved by the Tolpuddle Martyrs, the Suffragettes, Martin Luther King and the US civil rights movement. In every case you see the same thing. The change is NEVER given up freely. It never comes as the result of reasoned debate. It doesn't even usually come with mass public support - in all those cases there were swathes of the public who hated the activists involved and thought they were stupid or unintelligent or dangerous. Many more supported the message but thought the activists went about it in the wrong way.

But the evidence is clear. Large-scale systemic change of the sort required by the climate crisis has only ever been achieved as a result of small groups of people making themselves so disruptive, risking the full extent of the current law and the wrath of 'ordinary people going about their day' and in the face of strong resistant from the establishment of the day (who often have the support of a significant proportion of the the general public).

This isn't a lack of intelligence on the protesters part. It's historical literateness. You may not like it, but you're mistaken if you think these people are thick.

There is a big difference between civil rights movements and disruptive environmental activism.

Civil rights can completely change overnight with a stroke of a pen and for free.

What environmental activists ask for is often extremely expensive or not currently achievable with current science and technology. They want everything carbon neutral right now and unlike a change of civil rights laws, that just isn't instant.

They're also hypocrites. One is a large landlord with properties of poor energy efficiency and the ring leader lives in a social house (taking it away from someone who needs it more) which he hasn't bothered to insulate himself.

People insulate homes here all the time for the same reasons. The purpose begins the protests it so make the government pay for insulating homes but unfortunately their methods are similar to putting a gun to one's head and forcing them to sign a contract.

Sure. As I said you don't have to like them, and you'll be able to find any number of attack lines to discredit them if you're so inclined. Just as those who have opposed systemic change in the past did. Too expensive, too difficult, undeserved. Our opinions are immaterial to the success or otherwise of their campaign.

History suggests they may have a chance of succeeding with these tactics. And maybe one day climate activists will be venerated as people who actually took risks and put something on the line while most of us just sat at our computers and moaned about them.

Again. The practicalities of implementing a complete change in how energy is created and used is very different to the civil rights movements that you mention. The latter was solved by the stroke of a pen.

Most of the population is furious with disruptive environmental protests because they know the ones making the most noise have a very poor understanding of the reality of their demands. Protestors can't expect the entire nation to run off green energy in the next 5 years and certainly shouldn't be allowed to block roads for 5 years for impossible demands.

Again. Both are systemic changes. History tells how this has been achieved in the past.

Also again, the public's fury is not a barrier to success. Actually it helps because it puts the issue in the media. Governments would much prefer they were ignored (which is one of the reasons the police aren't allowed to arrest many of the protesters).

The commitment to insulating properly or changing energy sources could very well be made by a pen stroke. No one is asking for the impossible.

Incidentally, 2 years ago it was thought impossible that a safe vaccine for a novel virus could be found in 18 months.

With political will, money and effort, it's amazing what becomes possible.

Systematic changes yes, but one far, far easier than the other.

Commitment and achievement are two different things.