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Comment by NonContro | Hacker News Reader

The cheapest and most effective climate change intervention we could stage would be to get a few busses of activists and shut down the entry of workers and coal shipments into power plants, and to disable equipment.

The EU has about 300 coal power plants.

With 100 people at each, that's only 30,000 people.

In 2019, 300,000 people joined the 'climate strike' in the UK alone:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_2019_climate_strikes....

At this coal plant in Germany, just five people were able to shut it down for several hours, saving 26,000 tonnes of CO2:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/dec/04/no-regre...

We could probably pull this off just with the backing and resources of a multi-millionaire, to pay someone to organise the activists, identify the locations and equipment, and to bail them out of jail and defend them in courts.

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You may not want to take the risk to get injured. Three years ago, there was in France massive protests from the "yellow vests" that started because of the increase of the tax on diesel (which was lower than gas, and so the most popular type of vehicle), a problem for the poor-middle class. A number of people lost an eye or an hand because of blast balls or gaz grenades that were not launched properly. A few died. Some were beaten by the police in situations not requiring "legal violence". The government and the police used to say it was the fault of the protesters. But now we have smartphones to film, so in these cases there are… investigations that lead nowhere, the culprit from the police is never identified. It can be seen as a tactic to instill fear and reduce the protests. Also, take a burner phone because it can be taken by French police as it could have been a tool to organise an unlawful activity (and you may not see it anytime soon even if you are not guilty and released).

So basically: disregard the law, perform potentially dangerous actions and justify those by invoking "the greater good" because of course your political view are obviously aligned with everyone else best interest.

I do believe that we need to close coal powered plants. I do not believe that taking private, unannounced, disorganised and illegal initiatives is the way to do it.

Not all views are political, my friend. If I'm a person who lost all my property and dear ones in a forest fire, would you also say my view on closing the coal plants is political?

Absolutely: your views regarding the policies governing the future of coal plants are political. You are entitled to hold those views based on your past experience. You are entitled to voice your opinion and vote accordingly. You are not entitled to enforce those views by force outside of the legal framework if the world does not suit your preferences.

I'm tempted to consider the logistics of the idea.

The rule of law, and the expectation that society's problems won't be solved through violence, are important pillars of our civilizations and shouldn't be discarded lightly.

On the other hand, there's a very real possibility that climate change will destroy our civilization. When the greater good is "avoid the death of billions"... then yeah, private illegal action is starting to look good.

Not that good. If you look at the fact that associations like Greenpeace that were built on doing what OP suggests have probably offset the development of nuclear power by decades, and gotten us that much closer to global disaster, you realize that direct activism can have bad consequences too.

But good enough I wouldn't dismiss it out of hand.

Yeah but then you'll run out of electricity real quick... This isn't a sustainable nor effective solution at all

Its unlikely that the plants would be shut down completely, but these kind of frequent interruptions will be enough to push up their operating costs, and edge them closer towards closure.

Basically a 'people-driven' carbon tax.

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