Last week, members of the climate activist group Just Stop Oil glued their hands to the frame of an early 16th-century copy of Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper in London’s Royal Academy of Art. They painted “No New Oil” under the painting and said they chose the painting because climate change was causing worldwide food shortages. One activist, a schoolteacher from Leeds, said it was “unfair” to expect young people “to respect our culture when their government is hellbent on destroying their future by licensing new oil and gas projects” and claimed that such protests would continue until the government made “a meaningful statement” about new oil and gas licenses in the United Kingdom.
This is the fifth time activists from this organization have glued themselves to paintings in the past weeks. On July 4, two protesters glued their hands to John Constable’s famous landscape The Hay Wain (1821) in the National Gallery. A few days earlier, members of the group glued themselves to Vincent Van Gogh’s Peach Trees in Blossom (1889) in London’s Courtauld Gallery. One protester said that “it is immoral for cultural institutions to stand by and watch whilst our society descends into collapse. Galleries should close … We are either in resistance, or we are complicit.”
The demand that art galleries and museums join the climate “resistance” is particularly funny. They have for years been among the most obliging organizations when it comes to meeting the demands of climate activists. In early 2011, when most Just Stop Oil protesters still hadn’t hit puberty, the National Gallery released its “Carbon Management Plan” to reduce its carbon emissions and adopt the “best environmental practices … into all areas of its operations.” Two years ago, the Tate Gallery declared a “climate emergency” and promised to reduce its carbon emissions by 10% in four years.
But Just Stop Oil isn’t interested in reasonable reductions in carbon emissions. It has worked itself into a frenzy, claiming that unless the U.K. ends its “reliance on fossil fuels completely” in eight years, billions will die. Using gas or oil will “condemn humanity to oblivion,” it said, science be damned, going so far as to accuse the British government of genocide.
Previously, the organization protested at gas stations and oil terminals. In April, it vowed to block terminals until all its members were jailed or the British government agreed to “no new oil and gas.” But as logical as blockading oil terminals was, it wasn’t getting the clicks. Just Stop Oil hasn’t protested at an oil terminal since early May, even though its website states that it will protest “the U.K.’s oil and gas infrastructure” until the government meets its demands.
Instead, it has turned to protesting at art galleries and other events that will make the news. The group recently walked onto the track at the British Grand Prix at Silverstone during a break in the F1 race. In case journalists missed it, they provided high-quality photos of the protest, along with quotations and contact information, in a press release published minutes after the protest began.
Just Stop Oil is clearly following the example of Greenpeace, which has for years organized attention-grabbing stunts to open the purses and wallets of well-meaning liberals. Some were silly, like the time members dressed up as spider monkeys outside Burger King to protest deforestation. Others were less so, like when a Greenpeace activist parachuted into a Munich stadium during a European Championship soccer match, injuring two people (and almost getting shot himself), or when two activists walked on and damaged Peru’s Nazca Lines, the giant pre-Columbian earth etchings visible from the air.
Just Stop Oil generally avoids taking real risks (other than getting charged with a petty crime) and makes sure to have photos and quotations ready to go for immediate circulation. There are hundreds of organizations now like Just Stop Oil that use social media to draw attention to mostly harmless acts of protest that demand people “take action,” however unclear that action might be (though it usually means “make a donation”).
Environmental activism used to take real work. Joseph Beuys, for example, planted 7,000 oak trees over five years (he finished in 1982) in Kassel, Germany, to advocate greener cities across Germany. The Hungarian-American artist Agnes Denes planted two acres of wheat by hand in a landfill in New York City in the early 1980s to “call attention to our misplaced priorities and deteriorating human values” — that is, America’s preoccupation with making money rather than focusing on “world hunger and ecological concerns.” Even Andrea Polli’s 2010 installation Particle Falls, which projected a waterfall of light on the side of a building to represent pollution in real time visually, required her and her team to connect the measurements of an air monitor to lasers.
Now, all you need is a phone and spurious moral reasoning, usually something like “people do bad things because they are uninformed.” It also takes a schoolman’s love of mere discourse. Just Stop Oil initially demanded the country take steps to end its reliance on fossil fuels. Now, some Just Stop Oil members would settle for a “meaningful statement” from the government.
They aren’t the only ones. The Swiss activist Guillermo Fernandez went on a hunger strike last year until the Environment Minister Simonetta Sommaruga informed the Swiss Parliament of the “urgent and bleak” climate situation. Angus Rose did the same thing earlier this year, asking that the British Parliament be briefed on the climate crisis. In both cases, the government agreed, and both men apparently felt that something had been accomplished. When he ended his hunger strike, Rose said on Twitter, “The future looks a lot, lot better.”
Both men no doubt feel better about themselves, but it’s unlikely that their actions will lead to anything. Members of Just Stop Oil likely feel better about themselves, too. Their actions won’t lead to anything either, but I’m guessing they already know this. The point of attention-getting climate stunts is, of course, the attention for the activists themselves and the frisson that follows seeing pictures of themselves in the news while claiming to be the victims of genocide. “We are a generation sacrificed,” one protester said. It’s quite a performance.
Micah Mattix is a professor of English at Regent University.
