1 day Ago By Heather Saul
Just Stop Oil is dead. Long live Just Stop Oil. At the weekend, the orange-clad protest group carried out its last ever action: a hundreds-strong march through London that still managed to annoy people.
One man, stymied by the resulting traffic jam, slowly drove his van into the crowd until it pressed up against protesters. (Thankfully, nobody was hurt). The official JSO position is that they are putting down the cans of Heinz because they have succeeded in their mission – the Government has decided that it will no longer issue new licences for oil and gas production.
But this is not quite the full story. There are about 100 licences that were granted years ago to explore as-yet undrilled fields. According to Friends of the Earth, these could release as much as 1.
5 billion tonnes of pollution if these sites were to crank into production. if(window.adverts) { window.
adverts.addToArray({"pos": "inread-hb-ros-inews"}); }It seems JSO may just be putting a PR spin on its abrupt departure from the political landscape. Sources from inside the movement have said that the very real threat of arrest and record-breaking prison sentences stole the wind from its solar-powered sails, making it harder to recruit members and hang on to those who were left.
One protester told The Observer: “I could not personally keep pushing because I was physically and emotionally exhausted.” Who can blame them?The previous Conservative government passed sweeping anti-protest laws with staggering penalties in response to JSO’s three-year campaign of traffic-stopping road protests and splashy tactics, egged-on by the right-wing press and frustrated commuters. Sports matches, historic artworks, Stonehenge – none were spared the orange paint and powder.
Dozens of activists, including its founder Roger Hallam, are now serving some of the longest jail terms for civil disobedience in British history. According to certain sections of the British media, JSO are a joke at best and a menace at worst. They have even annoyed theatregoers – normally one of the most sedate people on the planet – who shouted “drag them off” as they disrupted a London production of The Tempest.
So why, despite everything, do these “eco-loon” tabloid hate figures have my vote? It is because they represent a rare ray of hope in a society that has otherwise collapsed into climate apathy, despair or even outright environmental destruction. Just look across the pond – Donald Trump is ripping up climate protections and has withdrawn the US from the Paris Agreement. His officials even want to revoke a government finding that greenhouse gases are harmful to human health.
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addToArray({"pos": "mpu_tablet_l1"}); }With 59 per cent of children and young people professing to be “very or extremely worried” about the environment, but few governments and political leaders proving to be up to the challenge of protecting the planet, it seems we are sleepwalking into a grim future. (Assuming, of course, that you do not already live somewhere suffering from climate disaster right now).The vast majority of people in the UK believe that climate change is happening.
Even Reform UK appears to have quietly binned the denialism of its former leader Richard Tice MP. The evidence is all around us: 2024 was the hottest year on record and Europe is officially the fastest-warming continent on the planet, bringing with it near-biblical waves of flooding, drought and storms. In summer, parts of southern Spain baked in 44C heat.
Britain’s unseasonably warm April may be pleasant for now, but it is not inconceivable that it is a harbinger of much more extreme weather to come.Given our seemingly inexorable march towards a hotter Earth, one of the easiest things to do is to shrug and adopt the brace position for impending climate catastrophe. (It is certainly the strategy of the billionaires currently buying apocalypse-proof bunkers in New Zealand).
It is also one of the most cowardly. JSO managed to marshal a broad coalition, from arty students to retired pensioners and vicars, to show that some people were not just going to give up and roll over. That in itself deserves our praise.
As much as people moaned about the roadblocks and eyebrow-raising stunts – I’m still not entirely sold on splashing a Van Gogh with soup, for instance – JSO actually represent a silent majority. According to new research, a whopping 89 per cent of the world’s population want their governments to do more to tackle climate change, with two out of three people in richer, industrialised countries like the UK wanting more action on the environment.The problem right now, researchers conclude, is that individuals “systematically underestimate the willingness of their fellow citizens to act”.
We are all engaged in a game of eco-chicken: nobody wants to be the first to admit that they are actually worried and, er, could somebody please do something please?You might not agree with their tactics, but Just Stop Oil put their freedom on the line for an issue that the vast majority of us care about. It is easy to laugh at the people blocking traffic. It is harder to admit that they were right – and harder still to be brave enough to join them.
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