Maeve Higgins: Just Stop Oil is about a choice — profit for a few or survival for all

Activist: 'The real question is why millions aren’t in civil resistance rather than why I am'

Two protesters from Just Stop Oil threw tinned soup at Vincent Van Gogh's famous 1888 work Sunflowers at the National Gallery in London. 

On Sunday, Patrick Michael John McCarthy, a 67-year-old carer from Telford, sat down in the middle of Park Lane, a four-lane road running beside Hyde Park in London.

There were a handful of other activists with him, all sharing the goal of shutting down the road to draw attention to the British government’s complicity in the climate crisis.

McCarthy said on the Just Stop Oil website: “Please understand these actions are not easy for any of us. It is uncomfortable, sometimes frightening, and financially draining, so why do it? Because we have seen the devastating truth about the existential threats we face and cannot ‘unsee’ that.”

He continued: “The real question is why millions aren’t in civil resistance rather than why I am.”

Police officers deal with activists from Just Stop Oil during their protest outside Harrods department store in Knightsbridge, London. 

To be clear, the British government has been wilding out for a long time. The Conservatives have been in power for 12 years and have driven the country’s inflation rate up to levels not seen since 1982.

The cost of living is hurting people now, with many fearing what is to come. The slide into poverty created by policy means many worry that, as winter closes in, they won’t be able to stay warm in their homes.

They are right to be afraid, not just in the short term, but because decisions and actions taken by their government now have consequences long into the future.

Of the many mistakes made by the disastrous Liz Truss cabinet, perhaps the deadliest has yet to play out — their decision to award more than 100 licences to companies for North Sea drilling, covering almost 900 locations, and expanding fracking across the country.

They did this despite opposition from the Labour Party, the public, and a raft of overwhelming scientific evidence that it was a terrible idea.

The British government ploughed on, putting profit first — despite the International Energy Agency stating there must be no new oil and gas drilling if the world is to stay within safe limits of global heating and meet the goal of net zero emissions by 2050.

The danger caused by these new drilling licences activated all kinds of people. This month sees the Just Stop Oil campaign accelerate its civil disobedience campaign to new levels as they try to attract more attention to its cause.

These actions included forcing the closure of roads and bridges by sitting directly on them, as McCarthy did, spray-painting an Aston Martin car showroom in London, and — in the most high-profile act yet — throwing soup at Van Gogh’s Sunflowers in The National Gallery.

Protesters blocking Shoreditch High Street in London. 

Everybody sat up and took notice of the soup! Everybody had an opinion; the internet lit up as the video sped around; it was stunning.

In daily conversations in person and online, people I had never heard express any interest in the climate crisis — the biggest story of our time — were suddenly talking about it. Some people were angry, some were inspired, but everyone was paying attention.

Phoebe Plummer, 21, and Anna Holland, 20, clearly stated their motivations. In an interview after her arrest, Plummer said: “I recognise that it looks like a slightly ridiculous action. I agree — it is ridiculous. But we’re not asking the question, ‘should everybody be throwing soup on paintings?’ 

What we’re doing is getting the conversation going so we can ask questions that matter, questions like, is it OK that Liz Truss is licensing over 100 new fossil fuel licenses? Is it OK that fossil fuels are subsidised 30 times more than renewables when offshore wind is currently nine times cheaper than fossil fuels?”

She went on to say: “We don’t have time to waste. Last year David King said what we do in the next three to four years will determine the future of humanity. So we’re doing this.”

David King — a former government chief scientist and UK climate envoy from 2000 to 2007 — worked as the British government’s special representative on climate from 2013 to 2017. King watched with dismay as the government not only dragged its heels on climate legislation but actively ran away from the science and the safe future still barely available to some of us.

A Just Stop Oil protester is led away by police after spray painting a sign outside New Scotland Yard.

They ran towards money instead. Speaking to The Guardian in August, King said energy companies are using high energy prices since the Ukraine invasion as an excuse to make more money.

“They are taking bigger and bigger profits, as the prices are so high,” he said. “That can only mean that they are tying their profits to the price, not the volume they are delivering.”

King and the Just Stop Oil activists share a sense of urgency with millions of others worldwide, not least the people who have suffered through the floods and fires created or exacerbated by fossil fuel emissions during this past year alone.

The Just Stop Oil activists understand why some people could initially be put off by their actions. In a statement, they said: “It could be that they’re not ready for what we are saying. Unconsciously many of us still hope someone else is going to come and sort it all out so we don’t have to go to these extremes.”

If you look at the disastrous leadership in Britain and further afield, it’s difficult to disagree with their next point.

“No one is coming to save us, so we need to push every cultural button we can to get our message through. And these buttons need to be as transgressive as possible, within the framework of non-violence, to get us to wake up and save ourselves.”

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