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Drones piloted by climate-change activists target Heathrow

economist.com

201–210 of 260 posts

Re: Drones piloted by climate-change activists target Heathrow

#201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1a -> 2d : creates a serious risk to the health or safety of the public or a section of the public 1b : the use or threat is designed to influence the government or an international governmental organisation 1c: the use or threat is made for the purpose of advancing a political, religious, racial or ideological cause So XR is an ideological and/or political cause, intended to influence Governments, and this threat to…

When I asked if you were a lawyer, I was genuinely curious. I figured if you were linking legislation without actually pointing out specifics, then it might be because your point was so blatantly obvious that only a dummy would not see it as self evident ;) I disagree with your assessment. I myself am certainly not a lawyer, but the way I interpret that language is for something to be considered an act of terrorism i…

I think you have to consider how transportation activity is being disrupted. It’s being disrupted because the risk of a collision between a drone and airliner carrying many people is considered a grave safety threat to hundreds of lives. A low altitude crash of an airliner poses serious risk of a large number of deaths both of the passengers and people on the ground. A large, non violent, protest blocking the streets probably doesn’t create the same risk of large numbers of deaths.

Re: Drones piloted by climate-change activists target Heathrow

#202

The level of negativity and hostility in the comments here is really disappointing to me. I agree that XR are definitely pushing the envelope on what we consider to be reasonable activism and protest. However, I also think that the old adage "desperate times call for desperate measures" applies here. Yes, there are plenty of actions being taken to combat the damage we're inflicting to this little wet rock we all call…

[flagged]

Yes, changing the words of a sentence changes the meaning of a sentence. You are very clever.

Re: Drones piloted by climate-change activists target Heathrow

#203
post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, those Thatcher speeches (and of course all the movement in Europe) worked, we reduced our emissions by almost 30% in 30 years. Which makes it specially bad when a bunch of people from the comfort of their life in here, now decide they can go around with their extremist views of environmentalism causing havoc in no less than in an European country: i.e. the only set of industrialized countries that actua…

Sure Europe took more action than most, but those actions are clearly now seen to be a) insufficient, and b) limited to a small proportion of the world's emissions. China and the US more than cancel out any improvements the EU made. They might have been sufficient if everyone had played, though I doubt it. They didn't, so the goal posts have moved significantly. There's still only one planet. Apologies for my shortha…

Sorry but those actions where clearly sufficient. If all countries had reduced their CO2 emissions like the EU block did, we would be in an excellent state. The reduction needs to keep happening in a steady pace, not have a sudden shift like these extremist environmentalist are calling for.

My issue with those analysis is that they are political, not environmentalist. For instance, if you look at India in those same analysis, you see they are doing great (although having increased they CO2 emissions in 300% and set to soon become the 2nd biggest polluter by a long margin).

In fact that's my issue with this all movement: It seems to take roots in contesting Western Society by using the climate crisis to force major political change in the West by disrupting the all economic output (because this will be what happens if you suddenly break the energy consumption by several %), and then build a society according to the political views of a minority that thinks they know best.

At the same time, that won't stop global warming at all, since the emissions on the West are already the minor part of the global emissions (due to china) and soon will become an even smaller part (due to India).

Re: Drones piloted by climate-change activists target Heathrow

#204

One thing must be pretty obvious but reading the comments it seems like it's not. XR is very explicit about being non violent. I don't believe they would do anything that would endanger the safety of the passengers.

Flying drones close to busy airport is endangering the safety of passengers.

Is it? The airport is forced to block all flights, which in turn prevents danger to passengers. That's the whole purpose behind the drones.

Re: Drones piloted by climate-change activists target Heathrow

#205

The level of negativity and hostility in the comments here is really disappointing to me. I agree that XR are definitely pushing the envelope on what we consider to be reasonable activism and protest. However, I also think that the old adage "desperate times call for desperate measures" applies here. Yes, there are plenty of actions being taken to combat the damage we're inflicting to this little wet rock we all call…

> Maybe some of those extraordinary ways cross the line. But who decides what the line is anyway? Probably the people you inconvenience. A bunch of vegans disrupted traffic in Melbourne, Australia recently. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-04-08/melbourne-vegan-prote... I don't think they made many friends. It's really hard getting someone to change their mind or their thinking about an issue. But I firmly believe ac…

One objective may be (or may at some point be) to cause enough economic damage that certain ecologically damaging activities are no longer economically Portugal. Start working on economic terms and governments and corporations start to listen.

Re: Drones piloted by climate-change activists target Heathrow

#206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1a -> 2d : creates a serious risk to the health or safety of the public or a section of the public 1b : the use or threat is designed to influence the government or an international governmental organisation 1c: the use or threat is made for the purpose of advancing a political, religious, racial or ideological cause So XR is an ideological and/or political cause, intended to influence Governments, and this threat to…

When I asked if you were a lawyer, I was genuinely curious. I figured if you were linking legislation without actually pointing out specifics, then it might be because your point was so blatantly obvious that only a dummy would not see it as self evident ;) I disagree with your assessment. I myself am certainly not a lawyer, but the way I interpret that language is for something to be considered an act of terrorism i…

> I disagree with your assessment. I myself am certainly not a lawyer, but the way I interpret that language is for something to be considered an act of terrorism it has to meet a criteria from section [1] AND section [2]. I agree that the planned drone demonstration meets 1c, but I don't think it meets any of the criteria from section 2.

Also not a lawyer, but it seems pretty clear to me that flying drones around an airport can be considered to fall under 2(d): "creates a serious risk to the health or safety of the public or a section of the public".

The fact that the airport can respond by closing down operations to mitigate the risk does not make it OK, any more than phoning in a warning before setting off a bomb makes that OK.

Re: Drones piloted by climate-change activists target Heathrow

#207

The level of negativity and hostility in the comments here is really disappointing to me. I agree that XR are definitely pushing the envelope on what we consider to be reasonable activism and protest. However, I also think that the old adage "desperate times call for desperate measures" applies here. Yes, there are plenty of actions being taken to combat the damage we're inflicting to this little wet rock we all call…

Pissing people off is not a very effective way of getting them to be sympathetic to your cause.

Also, I’m sure a good number of people flying are already worried about the climate but they still have to get where they’re going faster than a week.

Re: Drones piloted by climate-change activists target Heathrow

#208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flying drones close to busy airport is endangering the safety of passengers.

Is it? The airport is forced to block all flights, which in turn prevents danger to passengers. That's the whole purpose behind the drones.

This causes disruption to not just one airport but many. Diverting planes and generally making a mess of flight plans is most definitely putting lives in danger.

Re: Drones piloted by climate-change activists target Heathrow

#209
post #159

The level of negativity and hostility in the comments here is really disappointing to me. I agree that XR are definitely pushing the envelope on what we consider to be reasonable activism and protest. However, I also think that the old adage "desperate times call for desperate measures" applies here. Yes, there are plenty of actions being taken to combat the damage we're inflicting to this little wet rock we all call…

> However, I also think that the old adage "desperate times call for desperate measures" applies here. If they were really into desperate measures, their actions would be targeting China (you know, that country that now produces more CO2 than all the Western countries combined and that is set to keep greatly increasing it during the next decade), not the only set of developed countries that actually did something and…

Per capita, which seems like a more fair comparison, plenty of Western countries produce more CO2 than China; the US and Canada each produce about twice as much.

Re: Drones piloted by climate-change activists target Heathrow

#210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I'm sorry that my forceful language offended you so much. Let me assure you I am 100% not a fascist :) Democracy doesn't actually work a "certain way". There's many forms of democracy all over the world. Given that they're a human construct, one thing they all share in common is that they're deeply flawed in every permutation. I'm not interested in throwing anything away. I'm interested in iterating on what we have a…

> democracy .... is ... deeply flawed in every permutation.

> striving to make it better

And you are going to fix it... But voice you have does not have enough punch... And desperate situation requires desperate measures...

Still f*k you.

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