Just Stop Oil activists throw soup at Van Gogh’s Sunflowers after fellow protesters jailed
theguardian.com
Three individuals targeted National Gallery paintings an hour after Phoebe Plummer and Anna Holland were jailed for similar attack in 2022
Climate activists have thrown tomato soup over two Sunflowers paintings by Vincent van Gogh, just an hour after two others were jailed for a similar protest action in 2022.
Three supporters of Just Stop Oil walked into the National Gallery in London, where an exhibition of Van Gogh’s collected works is on display, at 2.30pm on Friday afternoon, and threw Heinz soup over Sunflowers 1889 and Sunflowers 1888.
The latter was the same work targeted by Phoebe Plummer and Anna Holland in 2022. That pair are now among 25 supporters of Just Stop Oil in jail for climate protests.
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What's your plan to keep society functioning with the immediate end of fossil fuels?
That wasn't my question. But if you must know, if the choice is between "maintaining the current standard of living" and "stop risking the habitability of the one place known that can support life", I choose the latter. Everytime. And it's crazy to choose the former.
But what about The Economy®™?!? We can't possibly have Apple only make 10s of billions of dollars in profit instead of 100s of billions of dollars because we made the price of goods destroying our planet more expensive!
If we start to make the cost of goods proportional to the associated environmental destruction, I won't be able to buy the 12th pair of Nikes for my shoe collection. I might have to wear my clothes more than once, and GASP, take public transit places.
Like sure, our grandkids may get to grow up in a world looking like something out of Mad Max, but at least I wouldn't have to suffer any inconveniences to my lifestyle.
It's crazy to think those are the only choices.
Kinda dumb of you to assume the only option to stop oil is an immediate cessation of all usage
Kinda dumb to call for the end of fossil fuels a decade ago.
Why?
We don't have a means to replace energy needs today and we were even further away a decade ago.
You don't think maybe we would be closer to having that means of energy production now if we started 50 years ago when we noticed the impacts of climate change?
Youre assuming climate activists have the MORONIC idea of just transitioning to shit tech, instead of the idea of investing in making tech that can replace oil usage
I don't assume all climate activists have the moronic opnion that we need to transition to shit tech, just the ones who say we need to be off fissile fuels a decade ago.
Again, why not assume people saying we should have been off fossil fuels a decade ago mean that we should have been researching and investing in alternatives 50 years ago? If we did, we would have a way better chance if being off fossil fuels a decade ago
Assume people that who said "we need to stop producing fossil fuels a decade ago" really ment we need to do more to end fossil fuels usage in the next decade?
And we never will if we don't start making progress on it, it'll always be unfeasible because the powers that be don't start making changes unless it's doable within one election cycle. Just Stop Oil isn't asking for immediate stopping of oil, just moving the deadline to 2030, which means there's a few years to realistically invest in other forms of energy generation like nuclear, green energy, and other ways.
The OP wanted a complete stop of production of fossil fuels a decade ago. That is a completely different statement than we need to curb fossil fuel use.
Yes but by asking to stop it a decade ago naturally the rest of the timeline moves too, so we should've had a more aggressive push against oil and gas 2 decades ago or more and transitioned much sooner to green energy.
You can't just cut and paste progress forward. Battery technology is still two or three decades away from being able to fully replace fossil fuel use. Lithium batteries are not the answer there's just not enough lithium and it can't be refined fast enough. Even completely replacing fossil fuel electricity generation would take three decades and there's no technological hurdles, it's just scaling manufacturing and construction resources to build that many plants. The scale of these efforts is hard to grasp.
What stats are you working off of for those 3 decade estimates? Either way the point remains, the sentiment of "we should've done X decades ago" doesn't mean we should now be able to do it instantly, it just means we had the information and knowhow to start working towards it decades ago and we didn't do it.
It's not states estimates it's estimates to create 4,000 Terrawatt hours of generation capacity (fossil fuel capacity in the US). To put that in context that's 2,000 Hoover dams $1,600,000,000,000 or 60 years of spending the whole GDP. Looks like my 30 year forecast was overly optimistic.
Transportation has technicological hurdles, no amount of effort can solve this problem without breakthroughs in technology. It'll be a long time before there is even a path to eliminating fossil fuels for transportation.
Why does it have to be an immediate end and not a phase out? Right now, we're not even phasing out.
When someone calls for ending something last decade it required immediate action now.
Okay, well that's not going to happen. But maybe, if we're lucky, it can be phased out.
Pretty uncharitable interpretation of something posted by someone who I would guess you have a common goal with.
People that give a fuck about "priceless art" or whatever are so silly. Lmao.
I'm not saying to not continue posting articles like this, but I do think that maybe your time would be better spent arguing with people who don't believe in climate change instead of arguing with people who do believe in climate change.
Yeah, who gives a shit about the cultural history of humanity, am I right? After destroying paintings, maybe the can go after other things of cultural significance! Bulldoze the Great Serpent Mound! Blow up Angkor Wat! Carve rude words into the Elgin Marbles!
There is no art on a dead planet.
Got it. Cut up the Martin Luther King, Jr. memorial into usable stone for building material.
While we're at it, let's also do it to the Holocaust memorial in Berlin. That's a lot of useful stone blocks.
No art on a dead planet, am I right?
If we're all dead, the memorials are for all of us anyway.
So you agree that those should be used for building material, yes?
No, I would prefer we just stop oil.
You're evading the question.
You'll have to excuse me, your gotcha question was of low quality, so I assumed you set me up a slam dunk.
My mistake, I expected too much.
Is your question seriously: Would I rather monuments be destroyed and people be alive, or that people be dead and monuments be preserved? Because obviously people are more important. But, if we stop climate change, we are likely to be able to enjoy both people being alive and monuments being preserved.
That is not the question I asked. You are still evading. It's not a gotcha. You said art doesn't matter because of climate change. I am giving you two examples of art that can be turned into something functional (at a lower carbon output than cement or concrete, I might add) and you refuse to say whether or not they should be. Answer the question.
I'm not evading the question, you just don't like my answer and want one to that you can feel superior about, so you are attempting to lead me to a frankly ridiculous question based on what I can only assume is purposeful malintent.
There is no art on a dead planet. There are no monuments without people. People give those things meaning. If we all die for the oil industry, then what good was the plexiglass covered in soup protecting that painting?
It's great that the carbon output of those art installations is so low. Did it offset the oil industry? If no, then who cares?
Just. Stop. Oil.
Society functioning in the way it's currently functioning is the cause of the problem. It's gonna stop because we change how we do things, or it'll get stopped in a way we have no control over, which is worse across every possible metric.
Investing in nuclear would help.
Grid wise with nuclear we have the capability of not using fossil fuels. Transportation wise we are decdades away before we have the capability.