From the article: *Large SUVs were particularly affected. According to the police, notes were attached to the cars indicating that they were harmful to the climate. The tyres were not punctured, but merely deflated. The cars were parked in the area between the S-Bahn line and Elbchaussee around Kanzleistraße. *
Personally, I like this protest way more than glueing themselves to the streets, causing traffic jams where cars burn gasoline for hours and ambulances / firefighters / police gets stuck, putting innocent life in danger.
The article is in German. Warning: this link leads to google translate.
Got it, so if she happens to be using that vehicle for getting groceries and not happen to have her equipment loaded then it’s game on. Cool cool cool.
There will always be cases of collateral damage. You won’t be able to safe the climate in such a bug and complex society without disadvantaging some people.
Maybe one possibility for your wife could be to measure the cleaning equipment and see if it might fit into a smaller car and potentially buy cleaning equipment that is more foldable that might fit. Usually even these small cars have a lot of space when using the back seat row. A big vacuum and mops should easily fit. If this is not possible then I completely understand your problem.
The bigger issue I see with this is that, when your wife would do everything to save gas, she would need to take some disadvantages, e.g., more uncomfortable to load the small vehicle. If there is no pressure for other people, she would be the only one doing it, making it unfair. That’s why it is so important to generate pressure on climate damaging behaviour on all fronts. And this action is one efficient and realistic way to achieve that. But of course you can make the movement more unpopular in the general population… It is really difficult to find and decide for a solution here…
I agree that there may potentially be some sort of solution to our situation. Believe me, we do talk about this sort of thing. However it also involves money we may or may not have. The best solution for her is probably to change careers (it’s very hard work and doesn’t want to do it forever anyway) but it’s going to take some time. In the meantime we are working with what we have.
None of this changes the fact that we are not the enemy. We can talk about collateral damage but this is just our situation. Many people are hurting right now, even if they drive a SUV or truck. And I do realize it is a double edged sword because we do need to move away from fossil fuels. The focus should be on those in power though. The systems involved with extraction of natural resources are more vulnerable than we think. Life for those in power can be made more difficult.