The other day in London, climate activists threw soup on the Vincent Van Gogh painting 'Sunflowers' in an attempt to combat climate change. After doing their vandalism and gluing their hands to the wall, these young people demanded to know whether onlookers cared more about the painting or the planet. The painting itself was covered by glass and wasn't damaged. The activists are being criminally charged with damaging the artwork's frame.
When I was a much younger man, I participated in direct action environmental activism against the destruction of old growth forests. Some sat in trees to keep them from getting cut down. People like me did support missions on the ground to carry mail for the tree sitters and keep the pressure on local government offices. In the end, no matter what we did, the trees pretty much all ended up getting cut down. Private companies, subsidized by the government, wrecked ecosystems to profit from the timber sales. Without root structures to hold them in place, hillsides slid into rivers, killing the salmon.
Although our actions proved ineffective in the face of the control regime's commitment to ecocide, our mission was always clear. We wanted the old growth trees to be left alone. What does this new breed of climate activists want? I have no idea. And I don't see what defacing artistic treasures has to do with climate change.
There are many forms of direct action environmental activism that I'd support. If young people began chaining themselves to oil refineries, I'd retweet their messages. If a network of climate change activists began canceling the politicians and financiers behind major projects wrecking the environment, I'd sing their praises in blog posts. If Davos were shut down by militant activists, I'd send money to their legal defense fund.
What I'll never support is trying to ruin perfectly good art just to make some abstract point that nobody really understands. And I very much doubt that these London activists grasp how stupid their action was. Stuff like this never happens in a vacuum. For every visible activist, there are many others materially supporting them. It disturbs me greatly to imagine that these wayward vandals have teachers who taught them that this kind of thing is a good way to make a difference.
Climate change is already underway. We could probably mitigate the worst impacts of this by reducing emissions and adopting regenerative land use practices on a massive scale. Neither of these things are politically feasible in most countries. As an alternative to these plausibly effective measures, bodies like the United Nations and the WEF are promoting a basket of measures designed primarily to line the pockets of select stakeholders.
Whether they know it or not, the London activists are the vanguard of a new brand of activism manufactured by NGOs to support a narrow policy agenda guaranteed not to meaningfully impact climate change. This new activism has nothing to do with what's happening in the world. It seems primarily concerned with spawning contrived media events which can be leveraged by meme factories to raise money for organizations with dubious finances.
To be honest, I never thought I'd see the day when I'd be viewing climate activists with disapproval. According to the Just Stop Oil website, this latest action was done to protest the "government’s inaction on both the cost of living crisis and the climate crisis." Sadly, the action did nothing at all to address these crises. I wish the people motivated to create change on such issues also had the wherewithal to actually address said issues by their protests.
(Feature image from Pixabay.)
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