Protesters block the traffic on Wellington's Transmission Gully. Photo / Debbie Munro
Protesters block the traffic on Wellington's Transmission Gully. Photo / Debbie Munro
OPINION:
On Wednesday, a small group of protesters used vans to block morning rush-hour traffic on Wellington's Transmission Gully by sitting in the southbound lane.
The group, which has been behind other disruptive protests in the capital, wanted better passenger rail and felt the new $1.25 billion car corridor wasan appropriate place to make the point.
A spokeswoman for the group apologised to motorists for the inconvenience, telling NZME she acknowledged it was an "extreme" action but that there wasn't much time left to combat climate change.
But Transport Minister Michael Wood called their actions "dangerous, stupid and counter-productive" to rail progress.
"These people and others who have recently granted themselves the right to disrupt people in large numbers – people like Brian Tamaki marching across the Harbour Bridge – need to reflect a little bit on how their actions affect others," he said.
Criticisms have also been levelled at two climate change protesters in the UK who went viral after throwing tomato soup at a Vincent van Gogh painting - which was behind glass and unharmed.
The actions of the young pair were widely mocked online to an extent that the coverage of their cause was peripheral at best.
It is easy to write these sorts of protests off as attention-seeking and to argue the rights of ordinary people to go about their daily business - driving to work, visiting a gallery -outweigh those of people wanting to score political points from disruption. Putting others in danger is obviously a line that should not be crossed.
The most egregious recent example is the 23-day Parliament protest, where I believe the disruption far outweighed the hard-to-define point(s).
Every day, however, the body of evidence showing the world is hurtling towards widespread climate disaster - and doing too little, too late to arrest it - seems to grow.
It is a confronting message; one that may be hard to hear. So, too, can be the ideas for addressing it.
Tractors convoy through Te Puke as part of Thursday's Groundswell protest. Photo / Stuart Whitaker
On Thursday, farmers (again) took their tractors to local streets to protest "unworkable" regulations such as the Government's proposed "world-first" agricultural emission plan.
As the Transmission Gully protesters had the day before, organisers defended the impact on motorists of the rural revolt.
Groundswell co-founder Bryce McKenzie told RNZ before the event the traffic disruption was "not intentional" and all he could say to anyone annoyed was sorry.
"All I can say is we apologise, but the whole thing about it is if you've got a government that won't listen you have to do things so people take notice, and as I said we're going to try and keep it as legal as we can."
It's hard to miss the irony of a diesel-powered protest over an emissions payment scheme. Though perhaps the same could be said of those who forced vehicles to idle on a highway.
One might also wonder how many of those blocked by the protests were alone in their cars.
Perhaps "extreme" protest acts are necessary to snap us out of our collective cognitive dissonance where we want climate action - but only if it does not inconvenience our way of life too much.
Disruptive public action will only become more extreme as the impacts of climate change grow and the policy responses either expand to match - or do not.
But given the magnitude of these issues, protest is far preferable to apathy.
