Al Gore Calls for Civil Disobedience to Stop Climate Change at Clinton Global Initiative
It's Getting Hot in Here is live blogging from the Clinton Global Initiative conference, and they note that Al Gore is calling on young people to practice civil disobedience to stop climate change. Now, I don't know exactly what he said because I'm getting this second-hand, but Al Gore has made these claims before and they kind of piss me off.
For one, last time he made such comments he implied that young people weren't doing such things, which is patently false. If you read It's Getting Hot in Here at all, you've certainly encountered stories of young people doing exactly that.
Second, it's not at all clear to me what that would accomplish. Protest requires a novelty and element of surprise, as well as the complicity of the media, in order to be effective. The reason anti-war protests were ineffective in preventing the invasion of Iraq is that they were totally unsurprising, and the media didn't care one bit about them. Contrast that to the student immigration marches - they caught the media completely off guard and were thus "a real story." That meant good coverage and a higher level of efficacy.
It's not at all clear to me that kids blocking bulldozers or protesting a power plant meets the threshold required for successful action via the protest model. Gore's comments are somewhat insulting to me as part of a generation doing quite a bit to raise awareness, alter our lifestyles, and prevent climate change. They also strike me as terrible strategy advice.
2008 Youth Vote in Context
The following charts and graphs are meant to contextualize the unique role that young voters played in the 2008 election, and their increasingly important role in a winning electoral coalition:
2008 Youth Electoral Map

2004 Youth Electoral Map

Youth Vote Partisan Advantage: 2000 - 2008

Youth Vote Historical Support: 1976 - 2008

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Agreed
I would only add that acts of civil disobedience can (in theory) also succeed if it directly prevents something from happening. This can often be effective at the local level in the sense that a lockout or blockade can stall some action (e.g. a clear-cut, etc) until some permanent legal injunction or other remedy could be brought to bear.
Nationally and globally, it's harder to see how this works. However, a truly committed organization could potentially prevent a great deal of coal burning by consistently sabotaging/disabling the very small number of rail lines which are crucial in carrying the massive amounts of coal mined in Wyoming and Montana to places like Georgia, where they're burned for power.
They would, of course, be branded terrorists and hunted down by the FBI/TIA/et-al, but it would have a real impact.
Just sayin'.
Yes
Look at Harvard and the student sit-ins in favor of a living wage for college employees . . . that was focuses and localized and it worked.
Stoller has some interesting points over at Open Left - if Al Gore himself lead such acts of civil disobedience, that might be shocking enough to cross the threshold and make such protests effective. He would use up a lot of his good will and newfound political capital, but it would probably work.