Just Stop Oil is a coalition with a simple demand.
Islington, London, UK. Many people’s response to last week’s Just Stop Oil protest scene, in which two demonstrators fastened themselves to the wall and flung tomato soup at the Sunflowers (1887) artwork by Vincent van Gogh, sounded like tennis icon and social crusader Martina Navratilova’s.
She tweeted, “Effing morons – this is not the way to protest!” Others have referred to them as “privileged White morons,” “climate nuts,” and “pernicious protesters” for their actions.
The vandals asked a fair question as we gasped: Do we care more about the fake sunflowers than the genuine ones? This is not meant to belittle art or support destruction, but without life, what will inspire art? And why were soup tins chosen as a destructive tool? Consider the overall picture.
There has been a concentrated attempt to raise awareness of climate change, and the number of protestor organizations has increased—mostly in the West. Just Stop Oil is one of them. A coalition attempting to “guarantee that the government commits to terminating all new licenses and consents for the exploration, exploitation, and production of fossil fuels in the UK,” according to the mission statement of this organization of climate protesters located in the UK. Throwing soup was also a symbolic act of defiance against the UK’s growing inflation, which is “the price of the oil crisis in part. Millions of cold-stricken households are unable to buy fuel and cannot even afford to cook a can of soup “An activist stated.
In addition to blocking traffic and roads throughout the UK since October began, the group has also thrown soup at a government building (Department of Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy), sprayed orange paint on police headquarters (New Scotland Yard), and vandalized luxury brand showrooms (luxe carmaker Aston Martin, luxury department store Harrods).
Vandalism that employs shock treatment provokes rather than communicates. Although due to concerns about climate change, insurers are currently pulling out of fossil fuel projects. Those fears have most likely been sparked by the protests.
Since the poor world is most impacted by climate change, it is alarming that there is a noticeable lack of ethnic variety in these massive climate rallies taking place throughout the First World. To consider that a major contributing factor in the 2013 death of nine-year-old Ella Adoo-Kissi-Debrah in London was air pollution. The first such case in the UK. Any endeavor to conserve the Earth in the face of a dwindling planet cannot and should not be exclusive, even if climate action should have predominantly been the responsibility of the White man for the entirety of time.
There are many different types of agitation, such as sit-ins and dharnas, occupation of public spaces (the Occupy movement), marches (with placards and candlelight), civil disobedience, boycotts, hunger strikes, demonstrations (such as Greta Thunberg’s participation in the 2020 World Economic Forum at Davos and leading a global school-children protests), or, closer to home, environmental movements like Bishnoi, Chipko, Appiko While there are more restrained and polite methods to voice opposition, it would be awful to let the critics and brickbats drown out the protest’s core demand—immediate climate action.
