COP27, climate change and the art of protest: How far is too far?

Monet’s “Grainstacks” got smashed with some mashed potatoes at Potsdam’s Barberini Museum. Activists belonging to the group Futura Vegetal glued themselves to Goya paintings in Madrid’s Prado gallery, and scrawled “1.5 C” on the wall between two frames. “Last week the UN recognised the impossibility of keeping us below the limit of 1.5 Celsius (agreed at the 2016 Paris climate agreement). We need change now,” the group’s official handle wrote on Twitter.

Most infamously, in October, members of the UK-based environmental activism group Just Stop Oil threw a can of tomato soup at Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” in London’s National Gallery, and then glued themselves to the painting. “What is worth more, art or life?” demanded the activists of their audience. “Are you more concerned about the protection of a painting or the protection of our planet and people?”

The shock-and-awe was particularly strong with the “Sunflowers” incident, perhaps because Van Gogh’s work resonates far and wide. Just Stop Oil—whose main mission is to push for a halt in the issuance of new fossil fuel mining licences in the UK—made unprecedented international headlines for this incident. Granted, a lot of it was outrage and criticism at their tactics. But, climate change or not, all press is good press, as the adage goes. They had the ear of the world.

While targeting art and prestigious cultural artefacts (including buildings) has become a potent weapon to raise awareness, activists are also blockading motorways and airports in large numbers. In the run-up to COP27, activists belonging to groups like Extinction Rebellion, Scientist Rebellion and Guardian Rebellion blocked airport terminals as part of organised action to protest emissions from the aviation industry and call for a ban on private jets, in at least 13 countries across the US and Europe.

More recently, Just Stop Oil activists were climbing the gantries of the M25 in London, blocking a tunnel, causing major traffic delays and getting arrested in large numbers. Meanwhile, in Germany, activists of the group Letzte Generation (Last Generation) glued themselves to a highway in Berlin. Not only did they disrupt traffic, their actions led to a direct casualty: A cyclist who’d been rolled over by a truck, could not be saved because a rescue vehicle could not reach her on time.

The court of public opinion, i.e., the Internet is divided down the middle about how to regard these ‘antics’; whether these protests are sheer genius or pure terrorism. “The real damage had been done, by alienating the public from the cause itself (the demand that the UK government reverse its support for opening new oil and gas fields in the North Sea),” noted a piece in The Conversation, after the “Sunflowers” incident. Vox, on the other hand, was impressed. “When I heard that the painting was unharmed, my reaction rapidly shifted from ‘This is horrifying’ to ‘This might be the best protest ever’.”

It’s obviously harder to condone theatrical protest ploys such as these when actual human casualty is involved. Robert Habeck, vice-chancellor and a senior figure in the Greens, who is part of the governing coalition government in Germany, had a harsh (and legitimate) response to the cyclist’s death. "Anyone who risks the health and life of others loses all legitimacy and also harms the climate movement itself," he said. "Some protests by some groups are now doing just that."

Therein lies the risk of climate change activism in 2022: undoubtedly, this is urgent work, given that two-thirds of the planet’s animal population has already vanished, and we can no longer hope to keep global temperature rise under 1.5 degrees Celsius. The shockwaves of having beloved cultural artefacts defaced or violated can be effective to get the message across; but what if the medium or the messenger overtakes the conversation, leaving the message once again at sea?

The most effective instances of civil disobedience in history have been dramatic disruptions, leaving us with enduring, iconic visuals. Gandhi’s salt march to the tree-huggers of the Chipko movement. The Tank Man of Tiananmen Square to Ai Wei Wei casually dropping a million-dollar Ming-era vase.

Suffragette Mary Richardson slashing the canvas of Velázquez’s Rokeby Venus at London’s National Gallery in 1914, to the hair-shearing women of Iran in 2022. A lone pre-teen Swedish girl stood outside the Riksdagshuset, holding a placard that read Skolstrejk för klimatet (“School strike for climate”).

Greta Thunberg, 2018 (Photo via Wikimedia Commons 4.0)

“Progress doesn’t always come about in response to patient and polite expositions at seminars and orderly petitions,” a recent Bloomberg think-piece observed somberly. “Giving women the franchise, freeing Indians from British colonialism or Black Americans from Jim Crow also took the courage of some individuals to get in the faces of people in the indifferent majority.”

Greta Thunberg’s resistance, which has cemented the place of youth activism in climate change issues, continues this year in absentia. She’s refused to participate in COP27 because, as she’s said, it’s a space for greenwashing and the space for civil society has been diminished (something the UN has been criticised for in the past as well). Indeed, there is reportedly a cordoned-off pit for activists to rally inside, located at some distance from the COP27 venue. This is a first. If climate change activists’ words and actions smack of desperation, that’s because these are desperate times.

Individual acts of protest around climate change this year reflect this, and have veered across the spectrum. Actor Rainn Wilson (Dwight Schrute from The Office), a member of the Arctic Basecamp, has been in the news for changing his name on Instagram to ‘RAINNFALL HEAT WAVE EXTREME WINTER WILSON’.  A far more serious (and violent) act was perpetrated on Earth Day in April, when activist Wynn Bruce set himself on fire outside the US Supreme Court building and died.

With the apocalypse knocking at Earth’s doorstep, expecting a proportionate response may not be reasonable. The extremists (may their tribe stay small) will be called to order, but perhaps questions like ‘where does one draw the line’ or indeed, ‘who can draw those lines?’ are already irrelevant.

In July, activist Simon Bramwell, cofounder of the Extinction Rebellion, said to ArtNews: “I worry about people’s safety, I worry for the young. But they feel that they don’t have anything left to lose, staring down the barrel of the climate gun, as it were. There’s always going to be a section of society that really struggles with comprehending the complexity of the ethical triage in front of us. It was the same for the suffragists in England who faced death threats, sexual abuse, brutality in prison, there are parallels in the US with the civil rights movement.”

“It’s absolutely vital to put ourselves in the way of the leviathan,” Bramwell continued. “We know that’s going to lead to bodily harm. We know it’s going to lead to reputational harm, to unpopularity. And yet there’s a clear need to tell the truth and to act like that matters.” Perhaps the only question left to ask is: Are we listening?