You have to be blind, deaf and dumb to not have catched a glimpse of what many believe is coming. You may be a sceptic or denier, but you have to worry about the massive number of people who believe in climate action in some degree. One group is Extinction Rebellion, which is driven by a farmer who just didn’t manage to grow crops anymore with the variable weather, it is now branded an “extermist ideology” by UK law enforcement.
The trouble is that climate action related crime is unavoidable. This is because our laws protect activity that is harmfull to our population. This in turn is because laws have been frequently if not nearly always proposed by industrial lobby groups and not by local popular representatives that bring forward a desire from the voters. We have the expansion of airports, no voter lobbies for that. Basically all demonstrations in the streets could be avoided by a functioning democracy, including those of extinction rebellion, but they are not.
What is a decent person going to do if prominent figures say things like this:
“Just think for a moment, what good is all the extra wealth in the world gained from business as usual if you can do nothing with it except watch it burn in catastrophic conditions” (Prince Charles)
You would think that local politics can change the local situation. If this was the case then a country would be a patchwork of different styles of living. In reality local politics (in holland) is mostly dead, killed by creatig larger regions with central decision taking. If local governance is alive it can only rearrange the furniture. Rotterdam or its suburb Overschie can’t decide to store energy in batteries or deal with its electric infrastructure the way it wants, that’s partially because the grid is semi-privatized, and partly because rules apply that can’t be strayed from locally.
Meanwhile as you see above the predictions become more dire by the day, and they are always right. We can not keep doing what we are doing! The problem is that if you decide you don’t need to fly, there are still a large number of people who consider that they should, or who’s only reasoning is “Its for sale so I can buy it”. That in fact is the general mindset that is destroying us : “I can make profit if I sell x” vs “x is for sale so I can buy it”. No ethics required. You can’t cooperate with people that have zero ethical sense!
Company CEOs are chosen to protect the company and you can not expect them to shut them down. Banks are not helping either.
So we think that breaking the law is going to happen, that it is only fair if it happens, and that companies that are hurt will likely be the ones that don’t show ethical boundaries or care for the environment in their activities. We can wait a long time for laws to change, and sometimes they do, and they create a precedent for more stingent laws, but we are also told we haven’t got the time to wait. Public discouse, when backed by the opinion of thousands of experts, is that industry is not moving because it hasn’t got the resources, but it is still hurting us. It does not stop by itself, so it needs to be stopped by someone else.
Now the dynamic will be that the police can get a lot of cash for fighting terrorism, and if people with a desire to protect their own futures start breaking laws to do so, the police has a choice to benefit from the increase in funding or push back and accept the damage done to companies that are hurting the public interest. The latter can only occur if funding of the police is somehow restricted. The new york banks gave millions to the NYPD, which meant that the “Occupy Wallstreet” movement went nowhere. Of course those people where wrong to occupy in a non-hindering way.
It is, we expect, unavoidable that rich individuals will start sponsoring criminal climate activism. Only criminal because the law forbids damaging private property. A lot of rich people understand the problem and want to see more effective action. This covers a wide range, you are talking about people who meet very few obstacles in their wealthy lives. The idea that rich people are always assholes is simply not true. Not all exploit poor people or have had to shut down their moral compas as have the likes of Rupert Murdoch. The mistrust and anger against the rich is partly due to the few rich tat are assholes, and partly because angry people are useless to themselves, which makes them easier to control.
When Holland was occupied by Spain the merchants and leaders became increasingly unhappy about the taxes Spain extracted. This caused them to revolt. The key moment came when William of Orange took leadership over the revolt, basically said revolutionaries could act in his name. It made him the founding father of the Netherlands. Winning the country from Spain was also a result of the dwindling supply of gold in the hands of the spanish, and as shown above a consequence of the desire of the dutch to enjoy the fruits of their own labour. So simply a desire for a better life than was allowed under spanish rule. We expect people to seek a better life than is now ahead of us under fossil based industrial rule. And it will likely take the same kind of revolution, directed against those that persist in being assholes.