Things got a little spicy at the PGA Tour’s Travelers Championship in Connecticut on Sunday. Tom Kim and Scottie Scheffler were leading the tournament as they reached the 18th and final green of the Cromwell course when protesters suddenly burst from the crowd and rushed the green. Protests these days are a dime a dozen, but this group wasn't shouting about "Genocide Joe" or freeing Palestine. These were six climate protesters representing our old friends at Extinction Rebellion. They began spreading a white powdery substance on the green which witnesses said produced the smell of fireworks in the air, but police quickly arrived, tackled them, placed them in handcuffs, and led them away. The protesters were shouting "No golf on a dead planet." The game was only delayed for a few minutes, however.
From CNN:
Protesters ran onto the 18th green in the final round of the PGA Tour’s Travelers Championship in Cromwell, Connecticut, Sunday, leaving a powdery substance on the putting surface and delaying play for several minutes.Video from broadcaster CBS showed several of the six demonstrators wearing shirts reading: “No golf on a dead planet.”Extinction Rebellion, a climate activist group, said it was behind the incident.Police quickly removed the protesters, allowing the final group, including leaders Tom Kim and Scottie Scheffler to finish the hole in a tie and move to a playoff.
If the small Extinction Rebellion crew thought they were going to be receiving any support from the crowd, they were sadly mistaken. Witnesses described the people in the gallery booing and shouting obscenities at the protesters. Online commentators shared videos of the brief scene of mayhem and noted how these idiots have managed to turn people against them even if they might otherwise harbor concerns over climate change.
The Extinction Rebellion protests tend to be small, even if they are destructive to property. But what's even more notable about them is just how dumb they seem to be. First of all, what is the point of disrupting a golf tournament if your primary issue involves climate change? The group's leaders put out a statement saying that the fans should support them because golf is "heavily reliant on good weather." First of all, that's rather idiotic because if the weather is warming, that would just extend the golf season for most people.
Beyond that, of all the sports they could pick to disrupt, this should have been near the bottom of the list. Golf courses are located outdoors. The clubs plant trees all over the place to make the course more challenging and the rest of the course is covered in grass of various lengths. All of these plants continuously suck carbon dioxide out of the air and create oxygen. Nearly all of the courses have switched to electric carts at this point and the pros aren't even allowed to use those. They have to walk all the way around the course, which is why they have a caddy with them to carry their clubs and help them work out their strategy. Nearly all the fans in the gallery have to walk as well.
In short, golf is just about the most climate-friendly sport imaginable. On top of that, both the PGA and the USGA promote climate change awareness and give money to charities spreading those messages. In other words, the idiots at Extinction Rebellion probably couldn't have chosen a more inappropriate and unproductive target for their protest if they intentionally tried to do so. If they showed up at a NASCAR race, perhaps we could almost understand, because the cars all still use internal combustion engines. (Of course, NASCAR fans would also be far more likely to swarm down and beat the living crap out of them if they tried this during a race.)
Typically, when the room-temperature-IQ activists from this group show up, they are dousing paint or soup on priceless works of art or chaining themselves up in places where they can disrupt traffic. They seem to believe they are "raising awareness," but as noted above, what they mostly wind up doing is making people angry at them. That's not how you get people to join your cause. That's how you make them want to run you down with their cars. Even if I were worried that climate change was somehow a clear and present danger of some sort (it's not as far as I can tell), I wouldn't join forces with these morons. It would be nice to see authorities begin pressing far more serious charges against them for property damage at a minimum. This crew was charged with criminal mischief in the first degree, criminal trespass in the first degree, and breach of Peace. They were released almost immediately on bonds of $5,000 dollars, and given the nature of those charges, they are unlikely to spend much if any time in jail.
.jpg)
