Just Stop Oil’s ceasing its violent protests part of cultural shift; the ‘Trump effect’ critics say

Just Stop Oil, the climate group based in the U.K., known for tossing cornstarch on Stonehenge and throwing soup on Vincent Van Gogh’s painting “Sunflowers,” announced Thursday that it would cease these kinds of protests. 

The announcement came as some of its members serve jail sentences, including the group’s founder Roger Hallam, for their role in blocking traffic on the M25 — the equivalent of an interstate highway — surrounding London. It also comes a week after a North Dakota jury ordered Greenpeace to pay $667 million in trespass and other claims to an oil and gas company over its enrollment in a pipeline protest in 2016, a verdict the group is appealing. 

While climate activists say their rights to protest fossil fuels are being trampled on, critics say their actions too often veered away from peaceful protests into criminal acts. Rather than spawn widespread support as the activists hoped, when the protests crossed the line, now they face real consequences. Critics say it’s part of a shift in the national dialogue on climate and energy issues in the wake of President Donald Trump’s reelection. People are no longer willing to look the other way when these activists’ behavior runs afoul of the law. 

“It’s the Trump effect. There’s a cultural shift throughout the West that’s going on right now, and that was reflected in the election of Donald Trump,” Jeff Reynolds, senior editor for Restoration News, told Just the News. 

Crossing the line in the EU

Over the course of seven days in November 2022, members of Just Stop Oil climbed over the gantries at various points along M25, which disrupted traffic along every sector of the encircling London highway. During the trial, the jury heard evidence about people who missed funerals, missed flights and students missing exams. A child with special needs was unable to take his medication, which made him “volatile.” 

Reportedly, someone with an aggressive form of cancer missed a doctor's appointment and had to wait two months to get another. People lost wages, a delivery driver was unable to deliver thousands of dollars worth of food to a hospital, and a police officer was injured when he was knocked off his motorcycle.

Last summer, Hallam and four other accomplices were sentenced for their role in the protest. Hallam insisted his actions were non-violent and characterized his crime as merely “giving a talk” on Zoom. In his sentencing remarks, Judge Christopher Hehir explained that the Zoom call revealed how “intricately planned the disruption was, and the level of sophistication involved.” He told the defendants in his sentencing remarks that they had “crossed the line from concerned campaigner to fanatic.”

The same year, Just Stop Oil crusaders Phoebe Plummer and Anna Holland threw paint over van Gogh’s “Sunflowers 1888,” causing an estimated $13,400 in damages, according to the Guardian. Holland was subsequently sentenced to 20 months, and Plummer received two years. An hour after Plummer was sentenced, three activists from Just Stop Oil entered the National Gallery in London and attacked “Sunflowers 1888” and another van Gogh painting, “Sunflowers 1889.”

Altogether 16 activists from the group were sentenced to jail in four different cases. Hallam and the others appealed the sentences. Plummer’s and Holland’s sentences were dismissed, Politico reported, and six others, including Hallam, were granted minor reductions in their sentences. Hallam’s sentence was reduced from five to four years. 

 "not the end of civil resistance"

In announcing that they were ceasing these kinds of protests, the group took credit for keeping consumers from being able to access 4.4 barrels of oil that were kept in the ground and for court rulings that found the U.K. government had acted unlawfully when it issued leases for oil and gas leases in the North Sea. 

“This is not the end of civil resistance. Governments everywhere are retreating from doing what is needed to protect us from the consequences of unchecked fossil fuel burning. As we head towards 2°C of global heating by the 2030s, the science is clear: billions of people will have to move or die and the global economy is going to collapse. This is unavoidable. We have been betrayed by a morally bankrupt political class,” the group said in a statement. 

Contrary to the group’s claims, there’s little evidence that fossil fuels will have these impacts. According to data from the International Disaster Database, the number of deaths from climate related natural disasters has declined approximately 98% since 1920. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations consortium of the world’s leading scientists, develops policy scenarios — called Shared Socioeconomic Pathways — to forecast emissions and economic outcomes under various policy approaches to addressing climate change. The IPCC projects enormous economic growth under all policy scenarios, even under a policy scenario in which nothing is done to address emissions.

David Blackmon, an energy analyst who publishes his work on his “Energy Absurdities” Substack, told Just the News that he was pleased with the group’s announcement. Trump’s successful campaign and his administration’s actions to unleash American energy, Blackmon said, is bringing an end to climate policies that began during the Obama administration. “I’m never going to get tired of all this winning,” Blackmon said. 

Cause or effect? Waning support for climate activism

As much as groups like Just Stop Oil and Climate Defiance had hoped blocking traffic and vandalizing works of art would garner support for their anti-fossil fuel policies, the public hasn’t appeared to buy into the idea that global warming is producing a crisis warranting the response the activists wanted.

Writing in Public, Dr. Roger Pielke, Jr., retired professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and Michael Shellenberger, co-founder of The Breakthrough Institute and author of “Apocalypse Never,” argue that global warming was never the concern that Democrats made it out to be. Few protests, the authors point out, have erupted since Trump took office and rolled out a number of pro-fossil fuel policies. 

“No Greta Thunberg marches — she’s moved on to Palestine. No drumbeat from the news media. No Extinction Rebellion activists blocking traffic in D.C….In fact, to the extent there have been protests by Democrats, they have been against the world’s most pioneering electric car manufacturer, Tesla, and have nothing to do with climate change,” Pielke and Shellenberger wrote. 

On a podcast with Shellenberger, Pielke said that, even though the concerns of climate activists occupy a lot of attention on social media, in universities, and until recently, the global financial sector, the “climate first” voter was a tiny slice of the total electorate. 

While polls show widespread support for climate policies, when such questions are paired with asking how much people are willing to spend on these policies, support drops dramatically. In the leadup to the presidential election in November, polls showed that climate change ranked near the bottom of voters’ concerns. The economy ranked at the top. 

“Climate change is not a big concern for people who are worried about paying the bills, and paying the bills got a lot harder because of the Biden administration’s climate policies,” Blackmon said. 

What next?

Reynolds, with Restoration News, said that an article he recently wrote about the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s tampering of temperature data received a lot of attention. Reynolds interviewed Tony Heller, a climate change skeptic who has been challenging parts of the dominant narrative on climate change for years. 

“People are hungry for these kinds of stories. They’re outraged. They see they’ve been lied to. Especially young people. They’re no longer paying attention to the hysterical claims, but they are very much paying attention,” Reynolds said. 

The question now is what happens as attention turns away from concerns about climate change. It was just a couple years ago that an independent movie romanticized blowing up a pipeline in protest of climate change. While, attacks on people who own Teslas and vandalism of the cars don't appear to be related to climate change issues, they demonstrate that some on the left are willing to use violence to advance their agenda. 

When it comes to climate activists, Blackmon said, it’s more likely that they’ll just fade away once their antics no longer gain attention. He points out that a few years in prison was enough for Just Stop Oil to give up the protests, which seems a pretty quick fold for people who believe the human race will become extinct if their policies aren’t implemented.

“It shows that law enforcement has the ability to control this stuff, if they get serious about enforcing the law and sentencing these people to the maximum possible prison time,” Blackmon said. 

Just Stop Oil announced it will conduct one last protest on April 26 at Parliament Square in London. According to the announcement, the protest will be “a lower-risk action and we won’t be pushing for arrest.” It remains to be seen how many show up for this last hurrah.