On December 10th, at around 6 p.m., 200 environmental activists suddenly stormed and “invaded” a Lafarge company cement factory of La Malle in Bouc-Bel-Air in the Bouches-du-Rhone, Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region in Southern France. Infrastructure at the plant was reportedly attacked using a variety of methods, including: sabotage of incinerators and electrical systems and devices; cable cutting; bags of cement cut open and spilled; damage to vehicles and construction equipment; damaged windows; and graffiti spraying.
Yep, don't remember who it was that I heard say something along the line of "If climate activists were really convinced they want to end the system that they can't deny is profitable to them, car dealerships wouldn't be able to have SUVs on their lot as they would be set on fire during the night, airports would get vandalized, gas stations blown up..."
They are quite serious. you may not agree with their tactics. none the less they are the ones putting themselves out there.
I do agree with you on some points. when I lived in Berlin their were people making gentrification difficult by placing small firelighters under the wheels of expensive cars on the streets.
How much attention do headline like these get? The activists get locked away, the company fixes the damage and continues business as usual. It gets a small note in the news, some people give the protesters a nod and then the whole thing is forgotten.
One can make points about the efficiency of different forms of protest, but there isn't the one right way and different approaches can compliment each other. If there's only road block protests, people complain that it doesn't get things done. Only vandalizing protests, and most people would either vilify them as violent or straight up not care enough to actually support them.
Seems to me like the road blocks actually inconvenienced people into siding with the more severe measures against the companies, something we otherwise wouldn't be talking about.
Which would make no news, because it can be hidden away (as few people are affected by it), while landing the protestors in jail for ages due to destruction of private property.
In conclusion, unless it's a mass action by a significant percentage of the population, it would have little effect.
The only thing that is happening will be the company being able to sell another one. There should be tax incentives to not drive SUVs like taxing by weight and motor power. The SUV was initially loved because of tax exemptions for 'light trucks' in the USA.
Loss of factory working days is a huge loss. Additionally, the more likely this is to happen, the more expensive said insurance will become, or insurers will just stop offering insurance.
I've never heard of insurance for large scale projects which can lose tends of thousands to millions of dollars per operations day lost. That's normally eaten by the company's savings or loans. Maybe it's different in France.
Individual action within the rules of capitalism will never be enough to actually get stuff done. @punkisundead@slrpnk.net has the right idea here. If you want to actually hinder the corporations, you need to make it impossible to stay in business, no matter how they influence the government and rig the system in their favor.