Hi Vasco—thanks for your kind feedback—much appreciated!
Good catch—I think this is something I’ve updated a bit on recently (although my views are relatively unstable!). In short, I think that disruptive protest / protest-focused SMOs are less marginally useful in the UK relative to 3-4 years ago, due to now high concern from climate change in the UK. That’s not to say I don’t think they’re useful at all, but I think if the aim is “general awareness raising” then it’s less useful than previously, or relative to other countries (e.g. East Europe). We see some evidence of this in our public opinion polling which found no changes in climate concern now but there was 3-4 years ago after similar disruptive protests.
However, I do think there’s some space for SMOs/protest movements to be more focused on specific policies, as we have seen recently with the likes of Stop Cambo/Stop Jackdaw or Just Stop Oil. This seems more useful in the UK and Western Europe where concern is high, but implementation of climate policies could still be improved.
Overall, I’m still unsure whether, given a magical button, I would incubate/kickstart new additional climate SMOs based in the UK. I think a lot of it depends on their target, their strategies, the audience they want to mobilise, etc.
Hi Vasco—thanks for your kind feedback—much appreciated!
Good catch—I think this is something I’ve updated a bit on recently (although my views are relatively unstable!). In short, I think that disruptive protest / protest-focused SMOs are less marginally useful in the UK relative to 3-4 years ago, due to now high concern from climate change in the UK. That’s not to say I don’t think they’re useful at all, but I think if the aim is “general awareness raising” then it’s less useful than previously, or relative to other countries (e.g. East Europe). We see some evidence of this in our public opinion polling which found no changes in climate concern now but there was 3-4 years ago after similar disruptive protests.
However, I do think there’s some space for SMOs/protest movements to be more focused on specific policies, as we have seen recently with the likes of Stop Cambo/Stop Jackdaw or Just Stop Oil. This seems more useful in the UK and Western Europe where concern is high, but implementation of climate policies could still be improved.
Overall, I’m still unsure whether, given a magical button, I would incubate/kickstart new additional climate SMOs based in the UK. I think a lot of it depends on their target, their strategies, the audience they want to mobilise, etc.
Thanks for the clarification!