If you ever wanted to read about fake druids vs. environmental activists, now’s your chance.
Not paint, literally orange corn flour that’ll wash off with the first rain. Stop spreading disinformation for big oil pls. Idk why they went for this instead of classical art, but acting like this is some terrible evil crime is exactly what oil companies want you to think, they want you to root against people protesting climate change, no matter how tiny their vandalism is in the grand scheme of things
I can root for people protesting climate change and think this was incredibly idiotic.
The article says it came out of a spray can. So how am I spreading misinformation?
Not misinformation, disinformation. You read the article, yet choose to act like this is comparable to spray paint or something else that won’t immediately wash off. This is like getting indignant bc somebody threw a couple eggs at a great pyramid. It’s stupid and irrelevant to climate change, but sharing articles where the title says they threw acid instead of eggs is just fucking wrong, and serves no purpose besides discrediting climate activism
Edit actually this article says nothing about corn flour, sorry for accusing you of ignoring that. That’s super shady and shitty on the Guardian’s part, a detail that majorly changes how actually harmful this act was
Double edit you’re still acting like they threw actual paint, so nvm my apology. Stop being such a blatant oil shill
It’s stone. Stone is full of cracks. It will get into those cracks and not wash off.
Furthermore, environmentalists pissing people off in the middle of a religious ceremony does nothing to help with an environmental cause. That’s the way PETA goes about doing things. Do you think they’ve been remotely effective?
I get that the stunts will draw attention to the environmental issues the activists are protesting for, but surely not pissing off the public would be beneficial in spreading a message to them?
The uninvolved public would just remember the attempted defacings, and not care about the damage being temporary or minimal.
Yeah, I agree with the sentiment, but I feel like the methods are pointless and even might have a reverse effect. Doing this does nothing really to help the cause, imo. Any minimal publicity it gets, I feel, just invigorates the right leaning conservatives to have more fuel to hate “the left” and “liberals”. I just don’t see any benefit to these types of stunts.
Are you seriously really upset at coloured cornflour being spread over some rocks?
One hopes the powder doesn’t cause any lasting damage to a priceless piece of human cultural heritage.
That is my worry. Even if it gets washed off by rain, it can get into cracks.
Man big oil has it easy with all these slacktivists shitting in public and calling it a protest.
I think this action lacked some supportive commentary, a spoken idea why they did it and what does it mean. It comes of as an attention bait without a clear message. It’s also too random to associate it with climate activism without a context.
After hearing about that I thought what would become our Stonehenge if we fail miserably (Statue of Liberty, like in Planet of the Apes?), or if we get back into a new Stone Age making this circular monument both the past and the future of humankind. I would not probably care that much if they actually damage it a bit if that’s for creating a powerful symbol, adding to it’s (contemporary) significance instead of taking from it. But that’s too much to ask, it seems, all we can do is orange paint.
Orange cornflour
Just stop oil is funded by the oil industry to make environmentalists look like morons.
As always, while I support their claimed ideals, I can only see them as petty vandals who care more about attention seeking than their cause. They certainly won’t get any of my time or attention. If you’re against Big Oil, protest Big Oil and half the population will agree. If you’re intentionally seeking my outrage with unrelated crap, you got it: rot in jail
It’s orange power which washed off with water
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Those stones will be suuuper useful to us after we died because our global ecosystem collapsed.
Maybe we should set up our own stones for explaining to future generations why we didnt do anything about climate change until it was too late.
I’m not sure how this helps though. These people can say to future generations, “well, we didn’t get people to stop using fossil fuels, but we did damage a 5000-year-old monument that was made long before anyone had the idea of burning fossil fuels to make people aware of a problem they were already aware of but powerless to do anything about.”
This isn’t going to stop oil companies from drilling for oil.
It reminds me of a friend of mine I used to follow elsewhere on social media. Every day, she would post pictures of ‘death row dogs’ in nearby shelters that were going to be euthanized. There was fuck all I could do about it. I already have two dogs, from shelters. I don’t have room for more and I couldn’t afford more. So all it did was make me feel like shit. Then she started posting photos with “too late” messages and I stopped following her.
How does that help?
Your example shows exactly what people are missing. Just because you did not have the capacity for more dogs doesnt mean that other people never got convinced to save one of those dogs. If those pictures convinced even just one person to adopt a dog, then it was worth the minor inconvienience that you had to go through.
Similarly the actual damage from this protest is slim to none (if they used the same stuff as usual that just washes away with water) and if it convinces somebody to get politically active for climate change then it was already worth it.
You thinking that you are powerless, shouldnt result in other people being forced to be powerless when they are not.
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A better way to propose your question is: out of all the millions of people on Earth who hear about these activities, will literally 0 of them take any meaningful action against climate change?
The likelihood of that quite small, suggesting a non-zero value. That non-zero value is likely to be smaller than the damages of water-washable paint.
I’m not advocating for anyone here, but I think that’s the calculus OP was suggesting, and it makes perfect sense to me.
If eye-rolling and annoyance produced greenhouse gases, then it might be a different story.
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but we did damage a 5000-year-old monument
As far as I could find out, they used orange cornflour that will just wash off the next time it rains. The most amount of damage anyone could seriously bring up was that it could harm/displace the lichen on the henge.
That’s not to say that I specifically condone the action, but it’s a lot less bad than this article makes it sound. It’s the same with the soup attack on one of van Gogh’s painting, which had protective glass on it. So far all the JSO actions targeting cultural/historical things (at least the ones that made it to the big news) have been done in a way that makes them sound awful at first hearing, but intentionally did not actually damage the targeted cultural/historical thing.
I think the biases of the journalist/news outlet/etc. are somewhat exposed by which parts they focus on and which they downplay or omit entirely.
I hope you’re right because this article says they used a spray can.
Also, orange dye can easily get into cracks in the rocks and stay there for a very long time. Especially if it displaces the lichens. That won’t make it collapse, so maybe ‘damage’ is not the right word, but this is potentially long-lasting vandalism which, as far as I can see, will have no effect on the actual problem.
I hope you’re right because this article says they used a spray can.
Which brings me back to the last point in my comment.
I also hope I’m right. The two times I looked into it (right after the attack and before writing my comment) both came up with that result. Also it seems that English Heritage came out today saying there was “No visible damage”.
As I said, I’m not writing to defend the action, just pointing out that the OP article is, willfully or not, omitting certain aspects that could make JSO look a little bit better.
Edit: Formatting
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How does that help?
We’re talking about it
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These activists make fighting to end climate change harder every time they pull this shit. It’s pure asshole behaviour.
At this point I feel like it’s akin to art that people just don’t get. The average person doesn’t understand the message or point.
These protestors are committing simple acts that threaten to damage something that people value. People are so very angry that biodegradable paint was sprayed on an ancient monument, or that soup was tossed onto the glass protecting a famous painting.
Yet they continue on with their lives and refuse to hold many corporations accountable while those corporations make our planet less habitable. This would become a wall of text that nobody would read if I tried to just outline the existential threat human society faces thanks to the reckless behavior of many of the organizations. The suffering, loss of life, economic damage… unimaginable… yet we are basically barreling toward that inevitability at full steam.
But I’m sorry, how silly of me. How could I forget that some scientists might lose the opportunity to study undisturbed lichen on Stonehenge this year.
People are so very angry that biodegradable paint was sprayed on an ancient monument, or that soup was tossed onto the glass protecting a famous painting.
What is so maddening about this comment is how much it proves my point that you don’t see. You need to accept it doesn’t matter if the overall damage is none existent. Just like how a magician is never in danger or a wrestler isn’t getting punched in the head. And we’re all still left with strong feelings and compel us, sometimes even to action.
The real danger is not as important as the perceived danger. You’re showing something to so many people that the average opinions becomes very important and the average opinion doesn’t view this favorably. This is obvious to everybody but the activists who convince themselves this is the height of civil action.
And the end result is scientists don’t get funding. Scientist funding is funded through public interests. Organizations, industry and taxes go to fund research. And when activists start stirring shit up, it makes many shrinking back like turtle heads until it blows over.
What is so maddening about this comment is how much it proves my point that you don’t see.
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This was literally the first sentence of my post. I’m sorry if I wasn’t clear enough and “maddened you”.
At this point I feel like it’s akin to art that people just don’t get. The average person doesn’t understand the message or point.
I personally don’t often enjoy art. In particular, the art where the artists are creating some kind of layered metaphor like a blank canvas with a cryptic title or something. The artist might be trying to communicate that consumerism will never fill our need for social contact or whatever but the message is lost on me.
The same thing applies here for most people I think. However, for once I actually see a meaning in it. I get horrified by the act, then I read later how little actual damage is done. Then I reflect on it and realize there is no way the protestors didn’t know that the Mona Lisa was protected by glass. There is no way they accidentally used the least harmful bright paint they could find on Stonehenge… and it occurs to me that I was so immediately upset at the perceived harm but have become desensitized to news of the actual harm of climate change.
I’m not stating that this message is obvious or that people are stupid if they are angry - I’m stating it gets lost and most people don’t get it. Yes, I’m a bit angry that the media often never mentions up front how little damage is done in any headlines I see. It’s usually “climate activists throw soup on Mona Lisa, arrested, condemned by bystanders and art lovers everywhere” not “activists harmlessly throw soup on painting protected by glass to demonstrate humanity’s questionable priorities”. Sure, the glass can be in the article somewhere but nobody bothers to read that far.
Regardless, I agree that the end result isn’t helping because most people don’t understand. I, however, sympathetic with the activists and felt compelled to explain the message as I saw it.
What is most interesting to me is that the “powers that be” have so much influence over the news that I feel like harmless acts of protests have lost their power and are demonized by default. Climate change, income inequality, police abuse, Gaza… I’m honestly concerned that people with very legitimate concerns (at least, in my mind) will have to further escalate their actions in order to feel heard. This is just the beginning I think.
“I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard.” MLK
People here keep saying it raises awareness. Who isn’t aware at this point? And why do they think doing this sort of thing helps the cause? Pissing people off doesn’t get them on your side, it does the opposite.
Yea I struggle with understanding that explanation too. I think something that plays a huge part of this is personalities that group together. Most people understand how important social game is. All activists seem like they have no social awareness. Their only goal is attention. They take the idea that there is no bad publicity to an extreme. I really believe many of these activist are being organized and funded by the oil industry without even realizing it. I say that because why wouldn’t they in this day and age. Its easy to funnel money to organizations secretly. We have proof they did this in the past.
https://www.climatefiles.com/exxon-knew/ are full of examples of this.
Great website for anyone interested on this topic. Full of documents from industries going back to the 50s showing internal documents and memos of how they knew and planned to discredit climate action
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