Discussion of climate, how it is changing, activism around that, the politics, and the energy systems change we need in order to stabilize things.
As a starting point, the burning of fossil fuels, and to a lesser extent deforestation and release of methane are responsible for the warming in recent decades:
How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world:
Recommended actions to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the near future:
Anti-science, inactivism, and unsupported conspiracy theories are not ok here.
They jailed the suffragettes for pulling off ridiculous tactics. The suffragettes still won, because they were right, no matter what protest tactic they used.
They're barking at the very wrong tree. lol
I mean they are at least right that it was painted with oil paints but painted way before oil was a problem. They should be throwing soup on gas pumps, just go around and dump it all over the pump. Dump it on oil trunks too, like inside the cabs.
I would be 100% for this.
I said this before when JSO used "washable" paint on Stonehenge: they are punching in the wrong direction. Billionaires don't care about human life, so why would they care about a painting?
These works belong to humanity, and by defacing them, you aren't winning converts—you're just pissing people off. Go vandalize something that belongs to the billionaires making things worse for the rest of us; unless you can win people to your cause, you're going to remain small-time vandals that get outsized prison sentences and unflattering media coverage.
Unless you can demonstrate an actual harm that these people are doing to the cause, I am going to give them my support for doing SOMETHING. If it moves the needle a millionth of a percent in the right direction, tear down all the art galleries. We only have one planet.
Many of these cases have had jury nullification, which means a jury of twelve people who have been vetted to remove bias, all unanimously agreed to say "fuck you" to the legal system rather than lock up JSO activists.
That tells me that there is considerable public support for them, whatever you say to the contrary.
Edit: Here's a study about the actual problems facing the climate movement. Support isn't the issue:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-024-01925-3
Abstract:
Mitigating climate change necessitates global cooperation, yet global data on individuals' willingness to act remain scarce. In this study, we conducted a representative survey across 125 countries, interviewing nearly 130,000 individuals. Our findings reveal widespread support for climate action. Notably, 69% of the global population expresses a willingness to contribute 1% of their personal income, 86% endorse pro-climate social norms and 89% demand intensified political action. Countries facing heightened vulnerability to climate change show a particularly high willingness to contribute. Despite these encouraging statistics, we document that the world is in a state of pluralistic ignorance, wherein individuals around the globe systematically underestimate the willingness of their fellow citizens to act. This perception gap, combined with individuals showing conditionally cooperative behaviour, poses challenges to further climate action. Therefore, raising awareness about the broad global support for climate action becomes critically important in promoting a unified response to climate change. Global support and cooperation are necessary for successful climate action. Large-scale representative survey results show that most of the population around the world is willing to support climate action, while a perception gap exists regarding other citizens' intention to act.
The abstract of that paper says that the real problem is people's lack of awareness of how incredibly high the support for climate action is, because that informs how likely they are to act.
In which case, all this hand-wringing about which actions increase or decrease support is a red herring, because the support is not actually in danger.
I would suggest that the real problem is people who handwring about the support creating the perception that the cause is less popular than it is.
Here's one study Pennsylvania University https://web.sas.upenn.edu/pcssm/commentary/public-disapproval-of-disruptive-climate-change-protests/
Do with it what you will.
These people didn't get a jury nullification, though, so clearly that doesn't apply here. I don't have a problem with all of their actions, just these that cause permanent or potentially permanent harm to historical artifacts.
And I disagree with your premise that history and its artifacts are a worthy sacrifice for any cause; that's how we get ignorant people and despots who weaponize that ignorance.
Doing "something" doesn't mean it's effective or worthwhile. I could throw soup on a painting, or I could spray paint a billionaire's mansion. I could paint Stonehenge, or I could sue the polluters. I could deface historical artifacts, or I could lobby a politician.
What they did is so dumb, and while I appreciate people who want to see anything done, making the news isn't some kind of event that will realistically "move the needle" and suddenly open the eyes of the ignorant.
But it’s not moving the needle, not at all ! It’s only fuelling antipathy towards environmental activism, and you can bet your favourite thing rightwingers are using that to pull centrists into their side.
The worse part is that they started with a plain wrong argument, this is not to attract the attention of billionaires, altough it can too. This is to catch the attention of everyone, to create a higher mass that is needed to change something, and tbh they are making more people aware of the issues, even if they get some stupid arguments against them when they are really doing no real harm as far as im aware.
Okay, and who hasn't heard of climate change by now? Who has been living under a rock that doesn't know that Big Oil is bad?
"Create a higher mass," ffs... You sound like a Christian justifying buying those "He Gets Us" Superbowl ads, as if nobody in the US has heard of Jesus before.
And no real harm? I guess we can just destroy history and artifacts, because who needs to learn from that shit amirite?
I'm all for stopping oil, but this fills me with sadness
I'm all for stopping oil, ~~but~~ this fills me with sadness