The fact was that before the Married Women’s Property Act was passed (in the UK) women lost their property upon marriage. However an unmarried or widowed woman could own property and hence potentially meet the threshold.

Second point, via James Heartfield:

Anti-climate protestors, Climate Rush, claim to stand in the tradition “the Suffragettes 100 years ago, who showed that peaceful civil disobedience could inspire positive change.” http://www.climaterush.co.uk/who.html

But their message of scarcity would horrify suffragette Sylvia Pankhurst, who wrote

“Socialism means plenty for all. We do not preach a gospel of want and scarcity, but of abundance.

“Our desire is not to make poor those who to-day are rich, in order to put the poor in the place where the rich now are. Our desire is not to pull down the present rulers to put other rulers in their places.

“We wish to abolish poverty and to provide abundance for all.

“We do not call for limitation of births, for penurious thrift, and self-denial. We call for a great production that will supply all, and more than all the people can consume.

“Such a great production is already possible, with the knowledge already possessed by mankind.

“To-day production is artificially checked, consumption still more so.”

Workers’ Dreadnought, 28 July 1923, http://www.marxists.org/archive/pankhurst-sylvia/1923/socialism.htm

But Climate Rush’s identification with the Suffragettes is, as you say, pastiche. And in bad taste, at that. (Can you imagine demonstrating in defence of Palestine disguised as Lawrence of Arabia?) That a few hundred idiots want to dress up in period costumes and conga through an airport is of minor importance. That the Guardian and other serious news sources treat this as an important news story – that is serious.

(I’ve just noticed that the Moonbat, our Welsh iceskating Savonorola, has just launched a frontal attack on Spiked, Ryanair, and the Aga-burning Middle Classes, no less. To your posts, denialists, “c’est la lutte finale” (which according to wiki translates as “arise ye workers from your slumbers”) He’s at his ad hominem best. So who will deliver the stake through the heart?)

The suffragette movement was a very public showing of what women wanted as their rights, but I wonder if it ever had any real effect on speeding up the eventual winning of the vote for women. After the First World War, when women were needed in industry and men were cut down in their youth, then the inevitable happened, and women finally got the vote.

Our current age of comfort and security (yes even with the threat of terrorism) and the lack of a monolithic enemy in the form of the Soviet Union, together with the real prospect of needing some sort of plan for future resource depletion, means that -if you could tolerate a laissez-faire philosophy – we will change eventually to any new system required. I would not say the suffragettes were cynical in the way they campaigned for the vote, just that, women were empowered by the fact that society was changing already. The fact that underlying needs are implicit means that the motivational gap for the campaigner and moraliser is readily filled with people whose antennas either consciously or subconsciously pick up on this relative freedom to fill this Zeitgeisy need..

I feel I am treading on eggshells here but, but maybe there is a natural tendency of a certain type of human to fill a certain space in society that is a bit noisy and maybe a bit self aggrandising, I’m sure the Pankhurst’s suffered nobly, but they remain the only people we think of when we think of the suffragettes, they alone seem synonymous with winning the vote. But how many women silently and vocally at the time but now forgotten, created the circumstances for this? This is all a bit ‘off the top of my head’ , I will have to talk to my sister about this, I’m sure she will set me right

In a similar way, I personally think humankind is already equipped to mitigate any problem with resources or even climate in the future. I believe that predicting events 100 years in advance is a waste of time. If anything we should be smarter and ensure we have an infrastructure that can handle quick turnarounds without a slow bureaucratic overhead. Trouble is, carbon offsetting and other woolly demands seen today, seem just designed to do just the opposite, whilst give certain people a feeling of moral warmth without actually ensuring any real usefulness.

I think this is where the departure from the suffragette comparison is, the suffragettes wanted votes now! Not a slow constricting reshaping of society that seems just designed to ensure the names of the vocal campaigners are written in stone.

Now if anyone wanted to campaign for a new world where freedom to debate any issue from any point of view is allowed, and the value of people’s thoughts can be used to ratchet up freedoms, discovery and enlightenment rather than bringing everything down to the lowest common denominator, then sign me up. I don’t mind going down in history as an early adopter of this idea!

Assume for a second that AGW is real. What is the slowest possible way to try to solve this problem? Well, the slowest way to solve this problem is through trying to effect a social change.

AGW needs to be handled within 10 years or we go beyond the tipping point. But social change takes 50 years minimum. And the Suffragettes are a natural example. They were founded in something like 1897, and over a hundred years later, here in the most advanced Western countries, we still don’t have true equality. Think about that for a moment. And at least 50% of the population should already be on side, right?

So if the environmentalists genuinely wish to solve this problem, social change is the one thing they should give up on right now. It will not be solved socially in time, it will not be solved by changing people’s behavior, it will not be solved by changing their material values.

The only possible solutions to AGW involve a technical upgrade to existing infrastructure. Making coal plants cleaner, making oil fueled cars cleaner, adding more nuclear stations, and so on. All stuff that you might want to be doing anyway even if nobody had ever heard of AGW. Ie. it has to all be stuff that people could already do within their existing material values. Don’t ask anyone to change their way of life. Don’t ask anyone to put the environment first, ahead of their personal needs.

If CO2 is the problem, don’t reframe the problem as “greed”. Jesus Christ tried teaching us to give up on greed 2000 years ago. The Buddha tried to teach us to let go of attachment 2500 years ago. And how much progress have we made socially in that time?

It is somewhat ironic that the environmentalist method of effecting a social change is… effectively.. unsustainable. It might even be destined to become a small spiritual cult, integrating pseudo Buddhist/Christian values, and God replaced by Gaia. Maybe there’s a sci-fi novel in there.

The environmental movement has gained some traction with middle class Westerners, but whilst we entertain great principles and noble ideas of social change, the day to day achievements are more about trying to recycle a bit of plastic or unplugging your mobile phone charger. Pure token gestures. A famous Buddhist monk coined the “spiritual materialism”–that’s where you pretend to be spiritual, just for the ego gratification that it gives you.

Either the environmentalists are truly unaware of the sheer impossibility of changing people’s material values, or they truly don’t believe the problem is real, but just like to have something noble to inflate their egos.

It AGW is real and solvable, it will probably be done quietly by a bunch of anonymous engineering geeks, designing technical upgrades, and working probably in the bowels of some big oil or coal company.

I am actually getting increasingly disturbed by these protest groups. We have a tiny minority of people who are trying to impose, by fiat, their malign views on the rest of society. As you rightly point out, they are successful precisely because they are conjured into being by an officialdom that already shares their goals (even if the protestors are too foolish to recognise this). But in this sense they are akin to Mao’s red guards, and no less dangerous. Although Plane Stupid were sentenced to community service and to pay fines, other protestors who shut down a power plant were let off on the grounds that they were preventing a bigger crime. How long until all these groups wise up and use this defence?

I am very worried about the future, not because of climate change, but because of the extremist, intolerant and authoritarian response to it being encouraged by the state. As you know I’ve written a couple of pieces on how green ideology is being spread in schools – and I could write more, I see new evidence all the time. Within ten years, the youth of this country will have been completely brainwashed into believing that swingeing cuts to living standards are required to save the planet for their (non-)enjoyment. The political climate will then become utterly intolerable.

We the public have heard their protest and suffered the inconvenience of being held up during travel, which is in itself stressful anyway. (Go visit Johannesburg to get a little reminder of mob mentality under stress.)

We heard their protest and nothing changed our minds. Now it is no longer new. Now it is no longer a new situation where people freeze not knowing what to do. Now people will know what to do, and they will react with anger lest they get held up again the next time. Are passengers really going to let them get away with it, when it is known that the authorities will be very soft on them, acknowledge their silly arguments about how they are doing it for a “just” cause?