From the article: *Large SUVs were particularly affected. According to the police, notes were attached to the cars indicating that they were harmful to the climate. The tyres were not punctured, but merely deflated. The cars were parked in the area between the S-Bahn line and Elbchaussee around Kanzleistraße. *
Personally, I like this protest way more than glueing themselves to the streets, causing traffic jams where cars burn gasoline for hours and ambulances / firefighters / police gets stuck, putting innocent life in danger.
The article is in German. Warning: this link leads to google translate.
The problem is protests like these hurt working class families. Folks just trying to get by. In my area, you can’t exist without a car. If you want to protest do something that affects the decision makers. People like me have no power.
In the areas of Hamburg that have been targeted not one single person needs an SUV. We have reliable public transport that’s easily accessible to wheelchairs or strollers as well. So yeah, it did target the right people.
To what end? Do SUV owners write bills? Will inconveniencing nonpolitical randos get anyone talking about the issues, let alone talking about them without souring the discussion for climate activists, who now look like vindictive assholes?
This reads like petty vengeance against people with marginally larger carbon footprints and with the wrong kind of social performance, not genuine activism. If you’re gonna slash tires, do it to the politicians ffs.
They didn’t slash the tires, they just let the air out. No damages.
I would rather they slashed politician’s tires than let out the air in random people’s tires.
I mean…here we all are…talking about it. Some people are being more civil than others, but some people are genuinely attempting to discuss the role of individual responsibility in the face of catastrophic climate change.
I’m pretty sure that Hamburg isn’t such an area, and that SUV’s are a totally unecessery folly there. This isn’t hurting working class families. (Also, people like you do have power, organize)
Yeah, they should’ve thought of that before being too poor to buy multiple vehicles for each situation.
You think poor people drive around SUVs in Hamburg because they use them for work?
I’m going to assume that you don’t know this so I’m gonna let you know: the targeted area is one of the most expensive to live in in Hamburg. And I’m going to repeat myself. Almost nobody in Hamburg needs an SUV.
The problem, in my country at least, is that these working class folks who just want to get by still vote for the same parties that don’t give a shit about the environment. So I’d say they are clearly part of the issue.
this “but the working class need to move around” tend to also be the first that complain when a bike or bus lane are made.
I wonder how many people on the receiving end even change their mind. I feel like if anything they’d completely reject the cause that is trying to be pushed, and the end result is a circle jerk between people who were already in agreement.
The SUV owner is going to pay a cost eventually either way, the only difference is when they pay enough of a cost from climate change itself to wake up it will be far too late, so you may as well exact the cost on them now wherever you can so they cannot ignore that it is effecting their life in an immediate way.
That said, I think protests like this are primarily about keeping climate change squarely in public discussion. Same reasoning with the activists who splashed paint on the glass cover of that Van Gogh painting.
No one anywhere should be able to just ignore climate change and nothing is more important than confronting it, not an SUV, not a glass cover on a Van Gogh painting, not the coal jobs in West Virginia.
Well, if they want to go shopping right now, chances are for this one trip they’ll take their spouses smaller car, public transport or maybe even walk. If SUVs become generally unreliable (because you never know if you have air in your tires when you need it), people will look for something more reliable. They’ll bitch about it, they won’t act out of conviction or so, but who cares.
These type of actions do have an effect in SUV sales though.
they mostly target SUVs. Also people of higher income are way more likely to have SUVs and use them more often.
They target SUVs and alike. In what area do you live that a much more affordable and less gasoline consuming car wouldn’t work for you?
SUVs are justified in rural communities where there either the weather or terrain make small vehicles unviable at best and outright dangerous at worst. I have family in rural Spain who have an SUV because they live halfway up a mountain and a car that can tackle driving along a dried up riverbed was essential. It’s less wasteful to keep an SUV for 10 years than buy a small car and have it destroyed by unforgiving terrain in less than 6 months.
I live in rural Michigan where we get several feet of snow each year. I drive a 10 year old used Jeep that was bought in cash with money we saved up so we could have a car that would handle the weather, our family, and the long distances we have to travel to work or shop.