I haven't done a good Green Weenie protest story in a while, and this one has all the elements of a classic.
Villains! Virtue Signaling Trendy Young Things! Protests! Arrests! Surprise Ending!
All I need is the guy who does the voice-overs for movie trailers, but I can't afford that based on what they pay me here. Maybe next year.
Anyway, a bit of background about our actors in this drama. Climate Defiance is a relative newcomer on the climate protest stage, emerging as a registered NGO in 2023 as a 'new breed' of climate activists primarily bent on making life miserable for powerful Democrats.
I'm assuming they, like Democrats themselves, figured the Democratic Party would be in power forever from POTATUS forward, so why waste time on the GOP.
A new group called Climate Defiance aims to make investment in fossil fuels unpopular with the public and politically toxic. And their members aren’t afraid to shout about it.
During Climate Week events in New York City in September 2023, Climate Defiance members chased down Deputy Secretary of the Interior Tommy Beaudreau, heckling him on the street and disrupting a speaking event over his role in approving the massive Willow Project, an oil-drilling venture on federal land in Alaska that would generate 9.2 million metric tons of heat-trapping carbon pollution a year.
...Climate Defiance members want the Democratic Party to do more, and sooner, for the climate. While acknowledging that Democrats have come far on climate policy — the Democrat-led Senate passed its first-ever major climate bill in 2022 — the group is pushing the party to support a total end to fossil fuels.
In a world where politicians and companies often refer to “all-of-the-above” energy strategies, a commitment to ditching fossil fuels would represent a major shift in the Overton window — the range of policy ideas that are popular and acceptable.
Climate Defiance participants say that activist tactics, including direct action, can push Democrats and the public to make that shift.
That there's going to be a new sheriff in town hasn't kept this feisty faction of fervent freedom from fossil fuel fighters from facing down the titans at the top of the Biden administration. Oh, no.
In the waning days of POTATUS at the top, his cabinet secretaries are still on Climate Defiance's active action agenda, and, when these green goblins strike?
They do so boldly...as the Department of Energy found out.
In a targeted - and professionally documented - swarm of fuzzy faces, watch caps, and carefully memorized angry argle-bargle, Climate Defiance made its move right in the middle of the nation's capital.
TAKE THAT, EE-VILLE DoE PARKING GARAGE!! WE ARE IN YO....
Well - technically, blocking the outside so no one can get in.
NONE SHALL PASS
I mean, the drama!
As one would expect, with a parking garage at one of the bigger departments in the cabinet, there was a potential for vehicular catastrophe - perhaps even an outbreak of physical violence due to fisticuffs from a frustrated DoE worker attempting to get to his desk and being foiled by these truants. So, D.C. police moved in to break up the protest.
Climate activists were arrested at a protest at the Energy Department’s Washington headquarters Thursday, the group Climate Defiance announced.
Thirteen people were arrested during the protest as activists sought to blockade the department, the group’s founder Michael Greenberg said Thursday. The climate group is pressing the Biden administration’s Energy Department to cancel pending authorizations for new liquefied natural gas export terminals.
Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said last month that the Biden administration will meet its self-imposed deadline to release a long-awaited study on liquefied natural gas exports this year. President-elect Donald Trump has pushed for a resumption of gas export approvals that were halted under President Joe Biden.
I'm not quite sure why it's a surprise to some of these petulant, destructive children when they do wind up arrested. But it always is a giggle reading what the shock does to their system.
It also helps illuminate just how out to lunch they are as far as reality goes.
The above whiny screed over having faced consequences for action that devolves into...whatever that is...should be a wake-up call to anyone who might possibly be swayed by some of these lunatics' emotional arguments.
These are who these people are - you surely do not want to follow along nor take the rest of us with you.
Especially since, not only do they not have any rational thought processes to work from, they're big fat fakes on top of it.
Poseurs of the pretentious, preaching, perfidious sort.
That boldly blocked parking garage they "shut DOWN" the Dept of Energy with?
Like...not so much. Our surprise ending.
That entrance is locked up tighter than a drum. They could have stayed there all day and never impeded a single soul.
In protest against LNG export permits, Climate Defiance blocks unused entrance to DOE garage
The group didn’t provide any information on why they were blocking an unused entrance to the agency’s garage.
...Andrew Follett, senior analyst at Club for Growth and former DOE contractor, said the group was actually blocking an unused entrance to a parking garage.
“That’s the entrance to a closed parking garage you notwithstanding nitwit! The entrance is around the other side!” Follett said in a comment on Climate Defiance’s post.
I am assuming they only made sure they were just annoying enough to get some killer videos for propaganda Instagrams.
There's another issue with them blocking an already blocked garage entrance in that particular building while protesting fossil fuels. There's no one in that building to inconvenience or annoy with their childish gibberish.
The phony, baloney climate crusader surprises keep coming.
It turns out that the DoE is one of the biggest offenders when it comes to wasting fossil fuels and energy itself, exemplified by that very building. Built for a capacity of almost 4900 people every day with nearly a million square feet of usable square footage, the average daily number of folks utilizing that massive structure in 2023 was?
8
...The Department of Energy is the least utilized building, with just eight employees counted for the daily average in 2023, though office management reportedly refuted the attendance estimate. Other agencies with the emptiest office spaces include the Agency for Global Media, the US Department of Agriculture, Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Environmental Protection Agency.
The only thing these poltroons didn't do was glue themselves to something, but that might have indicated they were serious instead of merely being out for a day unchaperoned.
In the best spirit of the revolution, they also claimed their non-action at the closed garage entrance of an empty building forced the hand of the Energy Secretary on an issue she'd already announced a month ago she'd have an answer for.
On Wednesday we met with the Deputy Energy Secretary.
— Climate Defiance (@ClimateDefiance) December 17, 2024
On Thursday we blockaded the Department of Energy.
Today the Secretary of Energy reversed her longstanding support for fracked gas.
Never question your power.🧵
Gosh.
It's amazing how many wins losers can pile up when they're delusional, to begin with.
This is your brain on Green.
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