pick your targets carefully

Here’s a report on a Philippine coal-fired power station protest by Greenpeace. The protest was part of activities planned while their boat, Rainbow Warrior II, is touring SE Asia.

I am all for peaceful activism against rampant fossil-fuel consumption. But it seems to me misguided to protest global warming at power plants in poor countries whose per capita carbon dioxide output is a fraction of that of developed countries, and where the guards are probably poorly-trained blokes on a couple of dollars a day, and who probably haven’t spent a whole lot of time thinking about climate change. Go and protest in Washington DC; I might join you there.

I don't for a second condone the violent response of the guards, and I hope the Greenpeace fellow recovers OK. If this sort of protest is poorly targeted and executed, though, it’ll do more harm than good. Greenpeace’s approach to several issues has turned me off over the last few years. I gave up membership years ago, and don’t intend to rejoin if they keep up the pseudo-scientific sensationalism that they seem to go for nowadays.