Tyre Extinguishers target SUVs on home turf of the ‘Chelsea Tractor’

chrisonatrike wrote:

Pearls?!  To the scaffold!

Guillotine, surely?  Getting the pearls off would be difficult with a rope around their neck, but without a head.....

eburtthebike wrote:

chrisonatrike wrote:

Pearls?!  To the scaffold!

Guillotine, surely?  Getting the pearls off would be difficult with a rope around their neck, but without a head.....

The guillotine did actually stand on a scaffold (French échafaud)...

Rendel Harris wrote:

The guillotine did actually stand on a scaffold (French échafaud)...

And to think people used to say much the same thing about those maddening souls who thought women should be able to cast a vote. 

walkopher wrote:

Unfortunately it seems that there's quite a lot of support for vandalising people's property on this website which is a real shame.

I've just scrolled through the comments and there are three of the fifty-nine thus far that could be interpreted as offering qualified support for the Tyre Extinguishers' campaign. There are many correctly pointing out the selfishness and stupidity of large SUVs, but that's not supporting the actions of that particular group (as I don't). Guess it's easier to play the victim card by saying, untruthfully, that many on this site support vandalism rather than truthfully reflecting the comments by acknowledging that many/most believe large SUVs are selfish and unnecessary.

The thing is, we're in deep trouble with global heating. The law is not keeping up with what needs to happen, so it's not surprising if various forms of non-violent protest start happening.

Exactly. The people who respond to protests of this nature with "WhY dOn'T ThEy pRoTesT PeaCeFulLy!?!?" don't seem to realise that people have been peacfully protesting enviromental damage/climate change for more than 50 years now, and they've been totally ignored by the world at large. Is it any surprise that the methods employed by XR and similar groups are getting a little more... overt?

I'm not going to suggest that people rush out and start damaging particularly polluting cars - but I will say that if we, as a society, are siding with the people who are buying V8-powered, 3-tonne tanks when they live in a city with decent public transport, then the penny doesn't seem to have dropped for us yet.

I say this as a school teacher who talks to young children every day so believe me when I say that history is FULL of examples where protest and resistance are the only ways that change has been achieved.

Greenwashing vandalism - it's a growing problem.

I had a look at their website - didn't seem appalling e.g. it's not immediately obvious they're neo-Nazis / a front for Tesla / being run by the Chinese government.  Although that doesn't demonstrate much.  I'm not a twitterer so can't speak for that.  I'll need convincing about some of the claims made there though.  And as many people have pointed out "SUV" can be a rather arbitrary and sometimes inaccurate proxy for "the worst polluting vehicles".

Ah - maybe this was the particularly offensive part (apart from incitement to do it)?

Tyre Extinguishers wrote:

Target posh / middle-class areas. [...] Hybrids and electric cars are fair game.

But also:

Tyre Extinguishers wrote:

Avoid: Cars clearly used for people with disabilities, traders’ cars (even if they’re large), minibuses and normal-sized cars.

Having said all that if we're doing "global warming belt-tightening" it's definitely the rich who are the best target for a resource diet - we're also those who can most easily change.  We?  In global terms "rich polluter" actually includes much of the population of the UK - there's an uncomfortable truth.

If you think they are greenwashing, you don't understand the meaning of the term 'greenwashing'.

"A form of marketing spin in which green PR and green marketing are deceptively used to persuade the public that an organization's products, aims and policies are environmentally friendly."

Eg
We want to vandalise rich people's property.

*Apply greenwashing*

"SUVs are a climate disaster

• SUVs cause air pollution

• SUVs are dangerous

• SUVs are unnecessary."

Therefore we're going to vandalise rich people's property.

For the logic to flow you have to demonstrate your first assertion though e.g. show that "let's attack the rich via letting down their tyres" is the primary aim.  Maybe that part was on Twitter?

For all I know that may be the hidden agenda.  I just haven't seen that demonstrated anywhere.  I guess that it's even likely that one or more people are doing this for that reason.  They might have been doing that before there were "tyre extinguishers" too.  It being a "decentralised group" it cuts both ways of course - so I suppose I'm asking about the people behind the website, that being their "face".

They clearly state on their website that they target "posh" areas.

They also gloat about targeting wealthy areas on their Twitter account.

There's obviously no environmental justification for such an approach thus revealing their ulterior motive.

Rich_cb wrote:

There's obviously no environmental justification for such an approach thus revealing their ulterior motive.

Apart from the fact that the rich pollute much, much more than the poor; seems pretty obvious to me.

A rich person's SUV pollutes more than a poor persons SUV?

It takes up more road space?

Didn't think so.

Not sure that "proves" it exactly.  Might be a front for the Maoist party of the UK, might be squabblesome malcontents, may be people who think that SUVs are OTT.  I guess in Edinburgh (don't know London) they wouldn't find that many SUVs to target in Muirhouse or Wester Hailes but more in the "posher" areas of Edinburgh - makes sense for them to go to where there were more SUVs, no?

Quote:

There's obviously no environmental justification for such an approach thus revealing their ulterior motive.

In the bigger picture environmental issues are actually inseperable from considerations of distribution of resources - wealth, broadly.  Clearly people targetting other's property based on that property being a conspicuous symbol of wealth makes people immediately think of revolutions.  Isn't some of the impetus for doing something about the climate here merely enlightened self-interest by us rich westerners to avoid them?

At least in the UK the longer term predictions are that yes, we'll flood more and have less certain weather but we won't desertify, lose all our (arable) land underwater.  Crops will still grow here.  Isn't the point as much about getting our act together voluntarily before the real poor kick off?  Those in much of the southern hemisphere, southern Europe, the middle east - who will have even less fresh water / food / land to live on so migration would increase massively and violent political instability likely come a lot closer?

(Aside: does "poor SUV owner" even make sense?  There's hire-purchase of course and I'm sure there are plenty who might consider themselves poor.  Obviously it's a relative term... but I'd suggest anyone in the UK who can afford to keep one running is in global terms pretty rich.)

Of course logically we could say "but any such 'diet' change is impossible we'll always lose that battle to our own rich".  Or even our own poor, because they can't get beyond being jealous of our own rich.  Or just motorists in general [1] [2].  Or that we'd be better to invest in methods of helping the leaders of poor countries keep their own populations / regions in check.  Or just impressing on them that they've got no chance of effectively getting anything from us that we don't give them - because we'll always win the battle.

I hope I haven't just answered my own questions there.

We're not talking in global terms in this instance.

I'd agree that on a global scale every single person in the UK is fabulously wealthy but Tyre Extinguishers are specifically targeting the richer areas of Europe.

SUVs made up 44% of European car sales last year so the idea that it's only the very wealthiest buying them is clearly false.

As I said before, there's no environmental justification for targeting SUVs in wealthy areas only.

I'd rather they were guerilla cycle lane builders ("but the poor people won't be able to get through!  It'll delay emergency vehicles - and health and crime issues predominantly affect the poorest!").  Breaking things is easier than creating them mostly though.

Back to it then.  I thought the issue of global heating (or whatever the preferred term) was ... global?  Can you explain how one could act globally in this case then?

They do cite particulates and the other inconveniences and dangers from large vehicles on their website.  So for that it would be fair to say that they were acting locally to address a local problem.  For the "climate" part of it, it would be logical to act more widely.  Maybe some kind of decentralised movement - so people didn't waste resources travelling to these actions - would be the logical way to go...?

Of course since greenhouse gases diffuse I suppose an apt choice would be for them to start photosynthesizing or - better - simply persuade others to change their habits. On which:

> SUVs made up 44% of European car sales last year so the idea that it's only the very wealthiest buying them is clearly false.

We're back to semantics ("very wealthiest") but then it seems this always was about that. ("very few people who can't afford SUVs are buying them" isn't surprising).  That statistic is consistent with it indeed being the wealthiest globally.  So this debate is about slicing and dicing of the categories of "wealthy" within the UK then - something we certainly love to do here.  Personally I'm not sure about "poor SUV owners" but then "poor" is a relative term of course.

What are useful questions?  "How can we persuade people to reduce some of their resource usage?"  I'm pretty sure any "solutions" will need that unless we just wait until consequences hit us and change happens by fiat.  Second - how do we get around people resisting change using the excuse that the wealthier (pick who you want - almost everyone can...) are more profligate than we are and it's not fair?

chrisonatrike wrote:

I'd rather they were guerilla cycle lane builders...

It seems there's a movement in the U.S. to paint crosswalks: https://usa.streetsblog.org/2022/04/06/how-to-paint-your-own-crosswalk-in-your-neighborhood-hypothetically/

https://crosswalksla.org/

However, LA has decided to remove the unauthorised painting: https://www.npr.org/2022/05/20/1100398406/la-removes-crosswalks-painted-secretive-group-promises-traffic-circle

It's an interesting approach as the U.S. junctions assign priority to pedestrians at them anyway, so the crosswalk painting is really just highlighting that fact. I believe that officials aren't best amused by them as they don't control the quality of the painting and paint used (hope it doesn't get slippery when wet).

Another vicious circle!  As the width of the roads go up (I think the US averages rather wide ones - it's the home of the stroad) the time it takes for a pedestrian to cross goes up.  That means more irritation for waiting drivers and temptation to blow through the signal.  Also I suspect that this means that to keep "vehicle throughput" up the time between pedestrian cycles must be increased.  So now everyone's vexed.

To try to move on the US has brought in "Leading Pedestrian Intervals" in some places.  Not sure about the safety implications of that.  I know that sometimes you can get somewhere by playing with traffic light patterns and phasing [1] [2] [3].  However always good to remind yourself that traffic lights are motor vehicle infra though...

It's clear this world is for spring-heeled Jack. For me the next move in this arms race is stilts.

chrisonatrike wrote:

Another vicious circle!  As the width of the roads go up (I think the US averages rather wide ones - it's the home of the stroad) the time it takes for a pedestrian to cross goes up.  That means more irritation for waiting drivers and temptation to blow through the signal.  Also I suspect that this means that to keep "vehicle throughput" up the time between pedestrian cycles must be increased.  So now everyone's vexed.

Clearly the next move in this arms race is stilts.  It's clear this world is for spring-heeled Jack...

You don't need stilts if you can jump well enough

If roughly half of all new cars are SUVs then that means a similar proportion of used cars are too.

Ergo SUVs aren't a problem that's exclusive to rich areas of the UK.

So why target rich areas?

If they also target hybrid and electric SUVs then CO2 emissions can't be their target either.

The PM 2.5 argument is ok but if that's your concern new EVs are probably going to be better than most old ICE cars as there'll be no exhaust particulate emissions and the regenerative braking eliminates a lot of the brake pad wear especially in a major city.

Targeting SUVs in rich areas makes little sense again. I'd imagine EV SUVs are far more common in rich areas than poor ones.

It's almost like the environmental aspect is just an excuse to vandalise the property of people they dislike/envy.

"Our chief motivation is envy, envy and dislike, dislike and envy - our two motivations are envy and dislike and a desire to bring down the capitalist system - Our three motivations are envy, dislike and a desire to bring down the capitalist system and a general concern about large vehicles. Our ... Four ...  No...  Amongst our motivations are ..."

chrisonatrike wrote:

"Our chief motivation is envy, envy and dislike, dislike and envy - our two motivations are envy and dislike and a desire to bring down the capitalist system - Our three motivations are envy, dislike and a desire to bring down the capitalist system and a general concern about large vehicles. Our ... Four ...  No...  Amongst our motivations are ..."

i wasn't expecting that...