Just Stop Oil is doing more harm for the cause than good

Mitigating climate change requires more than poems and protest

It’s never fun to tell someone well-intentioned that they’re doing it wrong. But occasionally, it is better if you do so.

If a friend were baking a cake to donate to the local orphanage, even if they had the best intentions in the world, it would still be wise to step in if you see them pouring lead and arsenic into the mixing bowl to add flavour.

And we should do the same when we see bad political activism. When you care about a cause, it can be tempting to assume that anyone ostensibly acting on its behalf is helping. But this isn’t always the case.

For example, imagine if I were to go to Boston in Lincolnshire to knock on doors on behalf of a hypothetical “Rejoin” campaign. Europe is an issue I care a lot about. But would it help the cause if I were to say “Hello” in Esperanto, and pull out a graph showing the positive economic impact of immigration? Of course not.

What made me think about this was a piece written by the comedian Robin Ince, defending the activist group Just Stop Oil (JSO), which is of course, best known for throwing orange paint over famous things, on behalf of climate change.

Reflecting after spending the day speaking at a JSO rally outside the Royal Courts of Justice, Robin wrote the following:

Whenever I put anything up about climate change protests, I will usually get a smattering of people, some bots, some possibly flesh, saying, “actually, I think these protests are doing more harm for the cause than good”. Generally, I think the people saying that aren’t really particularly bothered, addicted instead to a pasty, grumbling inaction that is made of little more than whining. If you have the energy to whine about protesters, then have another spoon of sugar and trying and get the energy to whine about the industries that are hastening extinctions.

The piece was a longer version of this Bluesky post, which echoes the same sentiment:

Now, to be clear – I’m about to be mean about Robin’s posts. But I also feel a bit bad about it.¹ He was a hugely formative figure to me when I was in my early 20s – his comedy, the shows he organised, and his advocacy of critical thinking were huge influences on me.²

But it’s using these same intellectual tools that he incubated that makes me think the core arguments made above don’t quite stack up. But instead of simply whining about it, I thought it would be more constructive to explain why I think so – and why I disagree with him on this.

So at severe risk of sounding like I’m addicted to grumbling inaction, here’s why Just Stop Oil is actually doing more damage to the climate cause than any good.