As always, while I support their claimed ideals, I can only see them as petty vandals who care more about attention seeking than their cause. They certainly won’t get any of my time or attention. If you’re against Big Oil, protest Big Oil and half the population will agree. If you’re intentionally seeking my outrage with unrelated crap, you got it: rot in jail
this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2024
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They do it because the stuff you're asking for doesn't work that well, but this does (that said they do still engage in those actions as far as I'm aware). Activism is about making noise, there aren't many tools beyond that and they've worked for all sorts of issues in the past.
The point is that JSO doesn't exist in a vacuum.
https://wagingnonviolence.org/2023/12/the-method-behind-just-stop-oil-annoying-madness/
the stuff you're asking for doesn't work that well, but this does
I didn't think that this works. The examples where people claim "is just like this" I don't see as being like this.
The ones that work are ones that have some relation to their cause. Forcing everyone to really think about an issue Inherent to the act. For example, going about and doing this to parked private jets, which they did.
Just doing anything to get attention isn't useful if there's no Inherent message in the act itself. Especially with climate where everyone already has awareness, just not action.
Being merely loud is not going to sway hearts and minds in your favor.
It's orange power which washed off with water
Yeah I don't know why they wouldn't block the entrance to an oil refinery. Some people would be unhappy about this especially the people that work there. But the general public could understand, who knows it could possibly slow production for a few days.
They have. Compared to this, it got barely any news coverage.
That is why they do this. Their only goal is attention, and they do that quite well.
The way they seem to operate is quite smart, actually:
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Their stunts get a lot of press and bring climate change to the forefront of people's minds, frequently.
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They're not a political party, so pissing voters off isn't a problem. They can afford to be unpopular to further the cause.
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Those who already care about the climate won't change that based on a small group they dislike.
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Those who call them "terrorists" are people who call anything short of licking oil company boot "eco-terrorism". They were never going to be convinced to care whatever the group does. Probably read the Daily Mail.
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Those who are apathetic about the climate are still going to be apathetic, with a bit of rage towards this group as with the others, but again, ultimately that doesn't matter as they still won't change anything based on a single group.
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A small handful of people will be inspired by them and their constant reminders of climate crisis, and be motivated to push for change.
The last bullet seems to be the target audience of the group. And they're the ones who will actually do anything.
Their only goal is attention
This is not scammy advertising where “any attention is good attention”. This is an important cause where we need to build support
They can afford to be unpopular to further the cause.
Sure, no donations, no popular support, they can just be marginalized and ignored as a bunch of extremists. Everyone cheers when the cops cart them off to jail. Yay for attention though
Those who are apathetic about the climate are still going to be apathetic, with a bit of rage
This is where they’re wrong, and where I’m especially frustrated when it’s a cause I agree with. All those middle ground or non-active people who could be wooed as supporters, will now dismiss the cause as a bunch of annoying kooks. Nobody caused change by driving away potential supporters
What cause are they furthering though?
Inspiring people to act against climate change.
They silence a lot of people fighting for climate change by making it harder for everyone to discuss this. They make it much harder every time they pull one of these stunts. Its not smart unless you're talking about the oil industry execs funding them
"Silence"? How?
They don't make it harder to discuss climate change. People don't just go "a small group I hate cares about climate change so now I don't care". And if they do, well, they never actually cared about the climate. They cared about looking good and were never going to help with anything.
And stop with the conspiracy that they're funded by oil executives. The organisation of the granddaughter of an oil billionaire (who is dead) funds 2% of them. Because, children and grandchildren, believe it or not, can disagree with their elders.
People don’t just go “a small group I hate cares about climate change so now I don’t care”.
No they don’t, but if I want to talk about the same cause to try to change people’s minds, instead I have to explain away a bunch of extremists and try to get them to take the cause seriously despite those extremists
It's 100% not a conspiracy and you can go back to find many climate organizations have been infiltrated by agent provocateurs since the 70s. The FBI sent a guy in had a kid and pulled him out leaving an entire family. Industries have lots of leaked documents showing their support for these groups because they're so unpalatable to the average person.
These groups behavior often make it harder. It distracts from the fight and puts a giant clown hat on the whole issue. People will argue "it's not permanent damage" without realizing the point that underlies that. This is about image. Its not about actual effect. Image is valuable and these people think that damaging the image somehow is the key to action because it gets people talking. Its not the 70s anymore everyone knows. We need these groups to be more self aware and create civil action to get people on board instead of making it unpalatable. Or just stop and give room for groups or drive positive change.
many climate organizations have been infiltrated
Ok but:
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you're talking about the US, JSO is UK based
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It is a conspiracy theory because you have no hard evidence that JSO is infiltrated and having it's strings pulled by big oil like you claim
It distracts from the fight
No I'd actually argue it brings the fight to the forefront of people's minds, specifically the people who are actually inclined to do something. Those who do nothing but complain about climate activism were never going to do anything useful and so their thoughts on the methods are frankly irrelevant since the methods work for those who actually want to act.
We need these groups to be more self aware and create civil action to get people on board instead of making it unpalatable.
They've blockaded oil terminals and vandalised terrible offenders driving climate change, and still do. It was nowhere near as effective as their publicity stunts, which get people talking. They just ended up getting whisked away by police and largely ignored by the news. Pointless.
Whether you like it or not, the sort of quiet, non-inconvenient activism you seem to be proposing has shown itself to be useless.
Those stones will be suuuper useful to us after we died because our global ecosystem collapsed.
Maybe we should set up our own stones for explaining to future generations why we didnt do anything about climate change until it was too late.
I'm not sure how this helps though. These people can say to future generations, "well, we didn't get people to stop using fossil fuels, but we did damage a 5000-year-old monument that was made long before anyone had the idea of burning fossil fuels to make people aware of a problem they were already aware of but powerless to do anything about."
This isn't going to stop oil companies from drilling for oil.
It reminds me of a friend of mine I used to follow elsewhere on social media. Every day, she would post pictures of 'death row dogs' in nearby shelters that were going to be euthanized. There was fuck all I could do about it. I already have two dogs, from shelters. I don't have room for more and I couldn't afford more. So all it did was make me feel like shit. Then she started posting photos with "too late" messages and I stopped following her.
How does that help?
How does that help?
We're talking about it
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“The orange cornflour we used to create an eye-catching spectacle will soon wash away with the rain..."
will soon wash away with the rain..."
Just like any attention they may have grabbed due to their stunt.
For the record, I'm not saying I agree with their methods, but I don't think it's fair to them either that everyone is acting like they did irreparable harm to the monument.
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Many of the recent protests about climate change have been less direct and more about stirring up controversy to force the public to actually think about their decisions.
My hat off to them as so far this style of protest has been working and has resulted in many of us pushing for better climate control.
You're right this isn't going to stop companies, but even if you disagreed with them it puts climate change in your conscious mind. Even if that simply means you'll try to make slightly more climate friendly decisions moving forwards, that's a win.
Personally I don't know if I agree with the technique, but I do feel like it has been working in terms of making people discuss this topic more.
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but we did damage a 5000-year-old monument
As far as I could find out, they used orange cornflour that will just wash off the next time it rains. The most amount of damage anyone could seriously bring up was that it could harm/displace the lichen on the henge.
That's not to say that I specifically condone the action, but it's a lot less bad than this article makes it sound. It's the same with the soup attack on one of van Gogh's painting, which had protective glass on it. So far all the JSO actions targeting cultural/historical things (at least the ones that made it to the big news) have been done in a way that makes them sound awful at first hearing, but intentionally did not actually damage the targeted cultural/historical thing.
I think the biases of the journalist/news outlet/etc. are somewhat exposed by which parts they focus on and which they downplay or omit entirely.
I hope you're right because this article says they used a spray can.
Also, orange dye can easily get into cracks in the rocks and stay there for a very long time. Especially if it displaces the lichens. That won't make it collapse, so maybe 'damage' is not the right word, but this is potentially long-lasting vandalism which, as far as I can see, will have no effect on the actual problem.
I hope you’re right because this article says they used a spray can.
Which brings me back to the last point in my comment.
I also hope I'm right. The two times I looked into it (right after the attack and before writing my comment) both came up with that result. Also it seems that English Heritage came out today saying there was "No visible damage".
As I said, I'm not writing to defend the action, just pointing out that the OP article is, willfully or not, omitting certain aspects that could make JSO look a little bit better.
Edit: Formatting
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Your example shows exactly what people are missing. Just because you did not have the capacity for more dogs doesnt mean that other people never got convinced to save one of those dogs. If those pictures convinced even just one person to adopt a dog, then it was worth the minor inconvienience that you had to go through.
Similarly the actual damage from this protest is slim to none (if they used the same stuff as usual that just washes away with water) and if it convinces somebody to get politically active for climate change then it was already worth it.
You thinking that you are powerless, shouldnt result in other people being forced to be powerless when they are not.
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A better way to propose your question is: out of all the millions of people on Earth who hear about these activities, will literally 0 of them take any meaningful action against climate change?
The likelihood of that quite small, suggesting a non-zero value. That non-zero value is likely to be smaller than the damages of water-washable paint.
I'm not advocating for anyone here, but I think that's the calculus OP was suggesting, and it makes perfect sense to me.
If eye-rolling and annoyance produced greenhouse gases, then it might be a different story.
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Not paint, literally orange corn flour that'll wash off with the first rain. Stop spreading disinformation for big oil pls. Idk why they went for this instead of classical art, but acting like this is some terrible evil crime is exactly what oil companies want you to think, they want you to root against people protesting climate change, no matter how tiny their vandalism is in the grand scheme of things
The article says it came out of a spray can. So how am I spreading misinformation?
Not misinformation, disinformation. You read the article, yet choose to act like this is comparable to spray paint or something else that won't immediately wash off. This is like getting indignant bc somebody threw a couple eggs at a great pyramid. It's stupid and irrelevant to climate change, but sharing articles where the title says they threw acid instead of eggs is just fucking wrong, and serves no purpose besides discrediting climate activism
Edit actually this article says nothing about corn flour, sorry for accusing you of ignoring that. That's super shady and shitty on the Guardian's part, a detail that majorly changes how actually harmful this act was
Double edit you're still acting like they threw actual paint, so nvm my apology. Stop being such a blatant oil shill
It's stone. Stone is full of cracks. It will get into those cracks and not wash off.
Furthermore, environmentalists pissing people off in the middle of a religious ceremony does nothing to help with an environmental cause. That's the way PETA goes about doing things. Do you think they've been remotely effective?
You know what else will get into the cracks?
Rain. To wash it off.
That's really not how things work. We know a lot about ancient foods specifically because they get stuck in cracks in tools and we can get them out and study them. The rain didn't get the tiny flecks of wheat out of the cracks.
"The rain didn't get the tiny flecks of wheat out of the cracks" Yet somehow it's clean. Why are you continuing to act like this is comparable to actual paint? You're whining about something that's literally not a deal in the slightest, you really should stop making free propaganda for oil companies
slight wording edit at the start
Maybe if you had given me that article before you started berating me for not knowing what I was talking about, I might have been educated on the subject.
Are you really not able to talk to people without insulting them?
The responsibility is on you to do your research before you argue about a topic.
They posted the article with the headline completely unchanged. If you wanna be mad at someone, be mad at The Guardian.
I am for sure, all the articles I've seen on this have called it paint and it's really disingenuous and frustrating. The way they describe it makes it sound like they took a can of paint and splashed it on the stones. I interpreted it that way at first and got pretty mad, imo there's no good environmental message that's sent by destroying the ruins of long dead civilizations. At least defacing classic European art can be seen as a protest against the colonialist attitudes that led to climate change, Idk how actually effective it is at forcing change but part of me gets some morbid satisfaction from it :3
Paint: a coloured substance which is spread over a surface and dries to leave a thin decorative or protective coating.
So in this case the cornstarch is the paint. No misinformation at all.
Nobody's first thought when they read "paint" is corn flour that easily washes off. Headlines written like this play these kinds of semantics games with their headlines to drive angry engagement, or even to push a political agenda sometimes. The Guardian seems to run articles critical of the oil industry fairly often so maybe this isn't sinister like that, I'd have to do more research on The Guardian and the article's author to get an idea