General Road and Highway Discussion

[danbrotherston]

Or more to the point, anyone for whom having their tires deflated "poisons" was already poisoned. Everything in context...they are doing something to a vehicle that is non-destructive and non-violent something most vehicle owners will experience many times through random chance (and more destructively at that)....anyone who experiences this and hates the people who did it so much that they are entirely unwilling to listen to any thing more are not going to be people who are willing to listen to the idea that they should not drive their vehicle in the city because it is the very message that is threatening to them...not the method of sending it.

This is nonsense and you seem to have a pretty poor view of how humans actually react to things like this and issues like this.

Peoples opinions on issues like climate change aren’t binary.  It’s not “you’re our ally or you’re our enemy”.  The biggest problem for climate change is getting people to care and to demand action from our governments to address - even when those actions are going to hurt our individual standard of livings (by internalizing the cost of climate change). 

This ridiculous approach is not going to help us do that!  It’s going to drive people to demand more funding for police (which is bad in itself and also leads to support for parties that have worse climate change policies).  It’s going to turn people off of “environmentalists” and be less likely to be convinced on other important climate change policies.  People are not going to want to be associated with these morons and will be less likely to talk about necessary climate change policies with friends and families.  And so on and so on.

All for the perceived benefit of convincing people SUVs are bad - when they’re not even close to the biggest problem in climate change.  It’s a weird tiny symptom that they’re trying to target in a super ineffective way.  Like is success just people trading SUVs for hybrid vans or cars?  Some fairy tale scenario where all SUVs turn into fully electric cars isn’t going to make more than a dent in greenhouse emissions.

You assume this is true. It sounds reasonable after all. And yet violence has historically been effective repeatedly in achieving ends. You assume I don't understand your arguments, but you're wrong, I've just studied it more deeply than before, and no longer feel it is as clear cut as you believe.

And yes, SUVs aren't the only problem for climate change. It is the one this group has decided to target. And lemme be completely frank...attacking a group for targeting the wrong environmental cause is uber weak sauce.

Edit: Something worth pointing out here that might have gotten lost here. The majority in the city do not own SUVs...