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After three years of attention-seeking behavior hurling tomato bisque at masterpieces and glue-sticking themselves to random surfaces, the UK’s most orange-vested climate troupe, Just Stop Oil, has decided to... well, stop.
Yes, the group that brought us soup-covered Van Goghs, powder paint vandalism at Stonehenge, and a Magna Carta shatterfest is hanging up the hi-vis vests at the end of April, the group said today in a press release as it claimed victory.
Their logic? The UK government has (sort of) agreed to their original demand: no new oil and gas exploration licenses. Of course, the same government is also greenlighting tiebacks to existing fields and giving the windfall tax a retirement date—so the oil is still flowing, just now with a polite legal workaround. But don’t let that nuance get in the way of a good press release.
Of course, the notice also follows tougher anti-protest laws that have made it more difficult for the group to do what it does best: vandalize. It also comes at a time when disruptive protests have seemed to fall quickly out of fashion. Extinction Rebellion bailed on attention-grabbing antics last year. With tighter protest laws and dwindling public patience, even the loudest activists are starting to read the room.
“We kept 4.4 billion barrels of oil in the ground,” Just Stop Oil announced, counting hypothetical barrels like imaginary friends. That figure assumes every single potential project was about to leap off the drawing board before they showed up with soup cans and glue. Bold.
The group is funded in large part by the Climate Emergency Fund—a U.S. nonprofit whose donors include heirs to oil fortunes.
As for what’s next, Just Stop Oil is citing the need for a "revolution" to tackle “mass death and rising fascism,” which feels like quite the pivot from fossil fuels.
By Julianne Geiger for Oilprice.com
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Julianne Geiger is a veteran editor, writer and researcher for Oilprice.com, and a member of the Creative Professionals Networking Group.