Tens of thousands march to kick off climate summit, demanding end to warming-causing fossil fuels

SeaJ@lemm.ee to News@lemmy.world – 186 points –
Tens of thousands march to kick off climate summit, demanding end to warming-causing fossil fuels
apnews.com
10

I wonder how many people screaming it will take for politicians to be able to hear them over the sound the campaign money they’re getting from fossil fuel companies and lobbyists.

I genuinely believe that instead of doing marches, they should all just pool money they would've spent doing this march, and then just send that money to the politician's fundraiser and hire lobbyists. All these marches are super inefficient use of your money.

If you look at the company lobbying budgets, it's honestly not even that much money. It's way smaller than most people think. It's often in like 10s of thousands to 100s of thousands for large ones. Very few exceptional ones reach tens of millions. These people in the march probably spent like 100 dollars to drive out there (and spend gas...), buy lunch, print signs, etc. Almost any notable marches are like 10K people. Huge ones have literally millions of people. If they just pooled 100 dollars from each of them, they'd single handedly create the biggest and largest lobbying force ever created by ridiculous margins. Just imagine how much policies that much money could move. Yet we don't do that. We just scream at them and hope they listen. Then realize the march did jack shit, and we repeat hoping they might listen the next time. And repeat...

You think they could out bribe Exxon, BP, etc?

Absofuckinglutely yes.

Exxon spent $6.8 million dollars in lobbying in 2021. BP spent $4.27 million.

I went to one on Friday (not NY) AMA

How was the turnout?

A little less than the last big one I went to, but not bad. Several thousand people for sure. Critical mass during the walk. The large majority of people bail during the end speeches.

Some reporter should ask these politicians:

Do your billionaire friends have room for you in their bunker? What about your wife and kids? Do they have room in that bunker?