Interesting Lessons From the Blockades
The real agenda of the protesters blockading oil trucks across
England and France isn’t to bring down the price of gas. In fact,
most of the protesters aren’t even farmers and truckers, as the
media have portrayed them, but green activists in disguise, writes
Natasha Walter in the British newspaper The
Independent. What they’re really trying to accomplish, she
says, is to show people that life without cars is not only
possible, it’s preferable.
Commenting on the oil blockades in France, Walter points out:
‘People started to live without their cars-walking to work, cycling
along once-filthy and busy roads, shopping around the corner rather
than in superstores. As the garages closed in France, people heard
the birdsong ring out louder than the traffic, and liked the
sound.’
The experience has gotten people thinking: ‘Now the questioning is
really beginning: do we want hypermobility to go on defining the
way we live?’ she writes. ‘The bubble is set to burst. More and
more people are beginning to see that the dream of the private car-
individual mobility with an ever-receding horizon as the limit-is a
dream that turns into a nightmare if everyone tries to put it into
practice.’ — Leif
Utne
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