Time To Stop JUST STOP OIL
Just Stop Oil was founded as recently as February 2022, but in a shade over two years it has made a name for itself. As a pest.
Although based in Britain, there are people who sympathise with its goals worldwide. Hopefully, hundreds of millions of people sympathise with its goals, but its methods are something else.
The idea that climate change is a man-made disaster has been debunked time and time again. Until recently, it was alluded to as global warming, but those of a certain vintage will remember that back in the 1970s, the same people were warning not of global warming but of a new ice age.
Having said that, human activity can and does affect the climate, sometimes profoundly, the dustbowls of the 1930s are proof of that, to take just one example. And it is only 14 years since the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe that could have killed every fish in the Atlantic.
Yes, we do need to stop oil as far as humanly possible, certainly we need to top drilling for it at sea, but there are ways to do this and there are ways to campaign for it. To begin with, although it once possessed the greatest empire in history, Britain is now an increasingly insignificant player in world affairs. China and India have around a third of the world’s population, and the USA is a massive consumer of energy, so stopping the traffic in London or attempting to deface the Magna Carta are not simply poor advertisements for a low oil economy, they are futile acts of vandalism that are beyond the pale.
The latest stunt pulled by Just Stop Oil was to spray Stonehenge with orange dust, an act that was condemned by a leading Druid who pointed out they are alienating countless potential supporters.
So what should Just Stop Oil be doing? Encouraging private companies and governments to develop the technologies of the future, something they won’t do by defacing monuments or winding people up in a myriad different ways. We should be thankful they haven’t resorted to actual terrorism, but we shouldn’t rule out the possibility that some of their more hot-headed supporters will at some point.
We - and they - also have to be realistic about oil because even if we could eliminate 95% of its use as fuel, a source of power and heating, it would still be needed for all manner of things, from lubricants to candles, to plastics.
Just Stop Oil needs to be reined in, and its activists need to turn their attentions to more productive activities. We’ve all heard the message, from them and a plethora of other sources; the time has now come to take meaningful action for the benefit of future generations.