Possibly, like that other trite cliché that doing something is better than doing nothing, but so general that it is meaningless.
But governments across the globe, including ours, are starting to make improvements in the reduction of use of fossil fuels so progress is being achieved. Whether it is enough, or fast enough, is the important question, along with whether the protesters are helping speed it up or are just background noise.
But governments across the world are also very susceptible to lobbying from those profiteers who would see business as usual to continue.
It's not as if everyone gets a fair chance to influence policy, the big influential mega polluting mega corps have the ear of governments all the time, it's not like they only get a once in five years chance to have their say.
Petrochemical companies, and other industries are making so much revenue from polluting the commons that they can afford full time paid lobbyists.
Those of us resisting, and calling for change do not have access to the same political or fiscal resources, so we have sometimes to resort to other measures to get attention drawn to how urgently this problem needs tackling.
Of course it was urgent decades ago - but again, who had influence??
Who had a say??
Us green obsessed eco-loons??
Fwiw disruptive protest has been shown to have an effect - although it might not always be admitted.
After us unwashed 'jobless🙄' hippy tree huggers made a right old nuisance of ourselves protesting, many new road building projects got quietly shelved.
We might not have stopped the ones in progress, but overall the effect was less road building than would have happened otherwise
Of course you'll always get some resistance from some quarters, but on the whole seeing people - even so called 'respectable' educated people, doctors, teachers, scientists, lawyers (farmers even) go out on a limb, put their liberty on the line, brings home the urgency of the message, to a wider public.
Plus it keeps the topic in the the kind of papers, where dry old reports from climate scientists alone, would never get a mention.
Yes, that's a valid point; but most of the likely victims of climate change also get little say in delaying it.
Arguably the Suffragettes were acting completely selfishly; CC protestors are acting for those with little say, who are not even their neighbours.
Yup, it's not just about future generations, who have no say now, although it is definitely that.
It's also about all those countries where CC is already a dangerous reality, but where there populations have little or no chance of influencing policies in the heaviest polluting 'developed' nations.
Especially unjust, when they've not done the emissions in the first place.
