OPINION
Simon O’Connor
Husband, step-father, and longtime student of philosophy and history. Also happen to be a former politician, including chairing New Zealand’s Foreign Affairs, Defense, and Trade Committee.
Media, left-wing MPs, and progressives delighted in another School Strike for Climate Change last Friday. As I have noted before, when these groups cannot convince the adults of their mad agenda, they turn instead to the youth to prosecute such causes with little understanding of nuance or history.
The recent ‘climate change’ protest had a surprisingly disparate range of topics, most with little connection to our environment. Climate of course, but also Maori rights, freeing Palestine, and oddly, housing density rules. At one level this was a rather strange potpourri of issues yet at another, it was a classic progressive grab bag of topics. All that united them is grievance. They are also topics ripe for hand-wringing rather than turning one’s hands to practical constructive change. Those protesting are able to moralise all day long on said topics, do nothing practically, and then have the benefit of waking the next day and remaining as angry as they were the day before.
A key hallmark of progressive protests is rage at others. There is little, if any, self-reflection. This is however, relatively easy to understand.
Blaming others and moralising emotionally is comparatively easier than making practical changes in one’s own life.
Many of the students protesting expressed concern around the climate. However, I couldn’t help but notice the number of young ones wearing their fast-fashion or white trainers – all of which come with a high impact on the environment. Their written signs made from plastic derivatives and fancy Samsung and iPhones, again, all made courtesy of fossil fuels.
The Treaty loomed large for some and yet calls for justice do not appear to start with them. I was wondering if any of those protesting have handed their, or their family’s, land back yet? It’s a relatively easy transaction. Similarly, how many of these protestors, particularly those at private schools or in employment, are seeking to leave so as to give up their space for others in greater need.
Why is it that calls for justice or affirmative action always apply to others, and not to the protestors calling for such action?
There was also the latest fashionable bandwagon of ‘freeing Palestine’. The funny or sad aspect, is that fashions come and go and often contradict one another. Only a few years back, these same ‘social justice warriors’ would have been at the #MeToo protests. “Believe all women” was one of their cries. Yet I have noticed their utter silence when it came to the horrendous sexual assaults on Jewish women on October 7th and since. It seems ‘believing all women’ only applies to some women and circumstances.
The protests hold little coherence and consequently will not be able to bring about any meaningful change. That the topics protested are an unrelated mishmash of issues does not help, but nor does the lack of coherent action on behalf of the protestors as mentioned earlier. There was lots of blame and yelling, but little to no solutions or graciousness. Ironically, they probably caused more pollution on Friday by snarling up traffic, disrupting public transport, and so on.
Which leads me to my final observation and one particularly focused on the school students who decided to take yet another day off school. And it is simply this:
The solution to climate change will be found in the classroom.