Environmental, climate, and vegan activists make their headlines by interrupting the public’s movement and events. Lately, activists are gluing themselves to UK, European, and Australian pedestrian crossings, roads, and runways.

On Piers Morgan Uncensored, June 28, 2023, Just Stop Oil Activist Chloe Naldrett insisted disruptive actions are necessary because of “climate emergency.”

For today’s activists, an “action” means intentionally disrupting transportation or public festivities (sports events, theater productions, shopping, restaurant dining). I wonder how they’d react to the news that stopping traffic was originally conceived as a way to discredit, not communicate, an environmental message.

Decades ago, environmental activists didn’t inconvenience the public for attention. Banners were hung off buildings. Activists organized marches and gatherings, applying for permits to use public streets or parks. Groups printed and distributed leaflets, published magazines, and hired lobbyists. Even when environmental extremists spiked trees, endangering logger and sawmill workers, these sinister acts didn’t inconvenience the public.

Change began as the 1980s ended. By spring 1989, “stopping traffic” was morphing from a synonym for attracting public attention to a method (eventually the method) for demanding public attention.

During summer, 1988, raw sewage and medical waste, nicknamed the Syringe Tide, regularly befouled New Jersey and Long Island beaches. After investigation, a New York State report offered no explanation for muck on miles of beaches, and suggested sewer runoff, illegal dumping, and unspecified other sources.

The state report didn’t mention routine disposal of New York City’s sewage. The sanitation department loaded untreated sewer contents into barges that emptied the waste into the Atlantic Ocean. Unlike previous dumpsites, where the waste stayed offshore, the new 1988 dumpsite allowed ocean currents to deposit the sewage on large stretches of shoreline.

An activist for Greenpeace, a born New Yorker named Kenny Bruno, came up with a plan. A daring and theatrical stunt would focus public attention to the actual cause and shame the city into addressing the issue. Key to Kenny’s plan was that, among the six bridges crossing the East River (where barges were loaded and dispatched), the Triborough Bridge had a unique architecture, with car and foot traffic on entirely separate decks.

A group of 13 activists would rappel from the bridge’s pedestrian deck, be highly visible from multiple points in the city, cause no obstruction to vehicle traffic, and could lower themselves to the water level to prevent the next scheduled sewage barge from traveling down the East River.

On the afternoon of Sept. 15, 1988, activists (half would rappel and half guard the ropes), walked up the pedestrian deck and got to work. The rappel team were up and over quickly, and securely in place before the first police arrived (since evening rush hour was just beginning, this took a while). In Astoria’s streets, word quickly spread -- “there’s people on the bridge!”

With New Yorkers’ hatred of rush hour and traffic jams in mind, Mayor Ed Koch cooked up a plan to focus public disapproval on the activists, while diverting attention away from NYC’s disgusting sewage disposal routine. He ordered Triborough Bridge traffic closed as long as people were dangling from the pedestrian deck.

From the mayor’s point of view, shutting down the bridge backfired. Although, as he’d hoped, people believed the rappel team intended to stop traffic, New Yorkers favored the activists and opposed dumping raw sewage. People gathered in the park at the east end of the bridge, showing support for the action. Meanwhile, the next scheduled poo barge traveled via the Long Island Sound, a trip three times longer than its usual East River route.

The point was made. The activists climbed back up, were charged at a Queens precinct and released in the morning. The truth was communicated, and the city was on notice. Dumping raw sewage at sea, and medical waste into sewers, had a political price and would have to stop soon.

Half a year later, in April 1989, there was a 10-day protest the Nevada Test Site, 65 miles north of Las Vegas. Peace Camp activities included blocking arriving employee busses, to prevent employees performing duties dangerous the public (like radioactive iodine releases). On Friday April 14, activities were winding down. Employees boarded buses headed home for the weekend. Protestors were preparing for camp ending on Sunday.

Word spread through Peace Camp that a protestor had thrown herself under a bus, breaking her leg, and delaying numerous employees’ return home. She hadn’t communicated any issue or disrupted any potentially dangerous activity. If this act changed the beliefs of anyone outside Peace Camp, it could only have been to harden opposition to the activists’ position.

She returned to camp on crutches, greeted as a hero.

In half a year, generating inconvenience as an intentionally-deployed tactic was an idea that was spreading.

Ed Koch failed to smear the 1988 anti-sewage protest, but accidentally birthed incoherent inconvenience activism. Disturbances are now performed in the name of climate emergency, livestock assumed to be suffering, and modified vegetable genomes (GMO’s rapid, reliable results serve aims as ancient as agriculture -- abundant, appealing food).

As Chloe Naldrett insisted to Piers Morgan, activists believe halting routine public activities without warning is necessary as it’s the only way to get public attention. Chloe made this point during a television broadcast later uploaded to multiple You Tube channels. During her appearance, Morgan issued her repeated, vigorous invitations to return for future discussions.

Greenpeace’s positions these days are similar to activists like Chloe. One Greenpeace founder, Patrick Moore, left 15 years after he helped create the organization. He publicly dismisses human-generated harm to Earth’s climate, and tactics meant to provoke climate alarmism. Meanwhile, Kenny Bruno, who joined after Moore left, is on Greenpeace USA’s board, and featured on the Pipeline Fighters Hub website.

In 1988, NYC had nightly news on three TV stations and a handful of daily newspapers. Back then, there weren’t alternatives to TV and newspapers for alerting the public to urgent information government preferred to keep secret or ignored. The best option was to quickly get the attention of someone in media. The Pentagon Papers and Watergate wouldn’t have been stories without reporters and news media.

Today’s ubiquitous phones record video or text content, and upload it instantly without cost (on some sites, content can generate income). And yet, not only do activists create spectacles in the name of getting public attention, but many mainstream media outlets produce copious content supportive of the climate emergency scenario. Searching the term, “climate emergency media coverage” turns up articles from the Guardian, the Nation, Scientific American, Politico, the NY Times, etc., all complaining climate gets insufficient attention.

So, where are the satellite photos of the Manhattan-sized island of garbage floating in the Pacific? Swaths of sickly vegetation? (hint: more CO2 = greener earth) Why is it the 150 cities with the worst air quality in 2022 were all in Asia, Africa, and the Mideast, none in North America or Europe? (hint: airborne carbon is fuel wasted)

Perhaps today’s activists appear to be engaged in incoherent disruptive activities because they have an urgent emotional need for attention, but nothing important to tell us.

Image: PxFuel