By: C Icart, Staff Writer
The writing is on the wall, or should I say, the soup is on the painting: the climate crisis is here.
In this attention-driven economy, news about Just Stop Oil activists throwing soup on Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” at London’s National Gallery has come and gone on our timelines. But it did happen, and for a brief moment, some people were upset. However, the painting is fine and let’s be real: how many of you cared about it before?
What started as an investigation into the origins of the activism group that generated all this buzz led me into a cloudy mess of half-truths. As I emerge from the weeds, I have to be honest: maybe Just Stop Oil aren’t the bad guys?
Quickly after the incident, rumours broke that Just Stop Oil is funded by an oil and gas (O&G) tycoon. Suddenly, the few folks that supported Just Stop Oil’s methods were now also against them. But I did some digging, and that seems to be only a little bit true.
Just Stop Oil is primarily funded by the Climate Emergency Fund (CEF), founded by Aileen Getty. Getty is an oil heiress, meaning she inherited part of her wealth from her family’s oil company. This was enough information for many to speculate that Big Oil funds Just Stop Oil to make climate activists look bad.
However, a quick Google search reveals that Getty has been vocal about and donating to various social justice issues for decades. Although she is not personally involved in the oil industry, she’s incredibly transparent about where her money comes from. So, is Just Stop Oil funded by oil? Not really. It’s partly funded by a woman who inherited money from her grandfather, who made a lot of money from oil.
If they’re not hired actors, who is Just Stop Oil, and what have they inadvertently taught us about misinformation? According to their webpage, they’re “a coalition of groups working together to ensure that the government commits to ending all new licenses and consents for the exploration, development, and production of fossil fuels in the UK.” While this is their most popular demonstration, the group has been practicing non-violent civil resistance for months, causing their members to be arrested more than a thousand times.
Why were people so quick to believe this TikTok conspiracy? Is there any truth to it? Do O&G executives fund other climate action groups? O&G regularly participates in greenwashing, which is definitely a practice we need to continue to critique. But I will also call out how quickly folks were to discredit civil disobedience in this situation. Why are we so intent on finding out what is “wrong” with climate activists?
Arguably, there are other ways to do climate activism than throwing soup and blocking racetracks. But, if people throwing soup and engaging in other forms of civil disobedience is enough to turn you off from climate activism entirely, I’m sorry to inform you that you didn’t stand for climate justice in the first place.
Getting lost in Tiktok conspiracies and discourse is still less of a contribution to climate justice than throwing soup. So if you really care, and trust me, you should (here are some scary facts if you need an extra nudge), look up initiatives in your community. Support grassroots activists who have been doing the grunt work for a long time now. That goes a lot further than being holier than thou about the “right” and “wrong” ways to protest against the destruction of the only planet we’ve got.
