This week's London student protest was disappointingly peaceful. That seems to be all anybody has to say about it. After predictions of violence and recycled riot photos, we were let down flat by a protest that was, well, just a protest.
There's hardly any news coverage for a legal, well-ordered march after all the drama of recent months. After the riots, we are jaded, unshockable, and much more prepared to believe that protesters have ulterior motives - or no real message at all.
"They don't know what they want", is the claim, and it has not always been well answered by action groups. Both sets of student protests have been attended by violence, however minimal. The OccupyLSX protest is dogged by controversy over its perceived aimlessness and dubious decision to 'occupy' the forecourt of St Paul's, rather than any of London's rather better defended financial institutions.
Maybe the best antidote to our protest apathy is a story of how to get things right. It's got all the essentials: drama, vast national support and unshakeable determination - even desperation - to see things through. And it is a powerful reminder of other issues that, even in the midst of economic crisis, deserve our attention.
In August, a thousand men, women and children from remote indigenous communities began a two-month walk from the heart of the Bolivian rainforest to the capital, La Paz.
It was a last-ditch attempt to stop the building of a highway through the Isiboro-Secure Indigenous Territory National Park, bringing logging and oil companies in its wake.
And remarkably, it succeeded. At the end of October, President Evo Morales reluctantly outlawed any such project, safeguarding 6000 square km of Amazonian forest.
Morales' green-friendly image disintegrated over the issue. In September, the government became the focus of an outpouring of public outrage after police attacked marchers with tear gas and batons near the town of Rurrenabaque, arresting hundreds.
Furious locals lit bonfires in the road to prevent prisoners being driven back to Trinidad, the starting point of the march. When police attempted to fly the protesters home, runways were barricaded. They were released, and the march continued. When it reached La Paz on Friday, tens of thousands lined the streets to offer support, food and blankets.
The Bolivian government learned that voters are not fooled by shallow lip service to the environmental riches of its country. Bolivia, one of the poorest countries in the Western hemisphere, is just starting to experience growth after decades of turmoil. But indigenous marchers and their supporters alike value natural wealth over economic boom.
I remember the 2010 general election vividly; it was the first one I could vote in. "Vote blue; go green", we heard, and Cameron has since stated his desire to be the 'greenest government ever'. But things have slipped, perhaps inevitably, in the past 18 months.
Green energy subsidies have been slashed, while polluting industries will receive tax breaks. Above all, there is a sense of apathy on the environment that all the Boris Bikes in the world can't fix. Government and protesters alike have bigger fish to fry.
That might seem understandable in light of the shifting economic balance - until we remember how far some people will go to safeguard our world. Protection of the earth's resources shouldn't fall by the wayside as soon as the economy needs a boost, and it needn't, as recent events in Bolivia have shown.
What a pity that, on our over-developed island, we have lost the sense of indignation at the depletion of the natural world that the Bolivian marchers exhibited so abundantly.