Civil Disobedience

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.