Friendly reminder: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/yes-science-is-political/
this post was submitted on 04 Mar 2025
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that's literally why blocking roads in protest is so effective. enough angry calls to the mayor office due to people being late for work etc, is how protesting puts pressure on representatives to actually represent the people.
or did you think that huddling on sidewalks holding signs was supposed to do something?
Blocking roads in protest has proven effective at exactly one thing: Increasing the enforcement and penalties for jaywalking.
It is counterproductive at everything else.
Where did I say huddle on sidewalks?
I think JSO should be firebombing ICE car dealerships, gas stations, muffler shops, and other entities and agents of the oil industry. Not harassing victims of that industry.
Well... no.
Excellent retort, but I can cite the legislative record supporting my point.
I can cite many news articles which show that protesting in this way is more effective.
No doubt, no doubt. There are plenty of articles claiming JSO protests are effective.
Of course, if they were actually effective, you wouldn't need to point to news articles promoting the virtues of standing around in the street. You'd be able to point to oil consumption rates. If their protests were actually effective, oil consumption rates would be falling.
The reality is that those articles do nothing but make you feel good, like something is being done. But reality doesn't care about feelings, or the fiddling articles designed to make us feel good while the world burns.
If that is the only metric you are looking it, kind of. It slumped during COVID and has looked like it's tailing off somewhat. Without tax breaks, subsidies and support for other forms of transport, say, we will not shake our dependence.
But, we can look at specific countries and see if those things have helped on a national scale, like Norway, for example, which has seen consumption decline since 2018. And Sweden. And Japan. And Germany. And...
They started obstructing traffic in 2022, not 2018. Norway's consumption has increased, significantly, since they began obstructing traffic.
Japan's decline since then is commensurate with its population decline. Germany's and Sweden's are flat. UK is up even more than Norway.
I am telling you when their trend started. Norway's consumption has not increased, it is down on 2018, as I said. It had a slight decline in 2023 (the increase between 2020 and 2022 is when people stopped driving during COVID then came back to restart its downward trend).
Actually no, if you know what commensurate means. The population has dropped around 4% since 2008, yet oil consumption has been decreasing since 1996.
Germany is similar in terms of consumption, Sweden likewise.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/oil-consumption-by-country
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop
JSO didn't exist in 1996 or 2008 or 2018 or 2020. It was founded in 2022.
You're giving JSO traffic obstructions credit for declines that happened decades before they came into existence, and in countries where they havent actually disrupted traffic.
You're giving them credit for "declines" that have actually been increases since the time they started regularly obstructing traffic in 2022.
Obstructing traffic is not an effective means of protest. Target actual agents and entities associated with the oil industry, not the victims.
Sigh... and how would you like to quantify that when there are so many factors?
They are effective and bring about awareness among other things.