Opinion – Ross Douthat: Protest that threw soup on Van Gogh painting exposes contradictions of climate activism

On Friday morning, two young women at London’s National Gallery approached Vincent van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” and threw tomato soup on the flowers before gluing themselves to the gallery wall.

They were part of a climate protest organization with an enlightening name: Just Stop Oil. Celebrating the vandalism, the group declared that the “disruption is a response to government inaction on both the cost of living crisis and the climate crisis” and that the action was timed to protest “a new round of oil and gas licensing”. and “a rising energy price” that threatens “almost 8 million homes.”

It is a mistake to demand perfect consistency from activists, but if you read the previous paragraph carefully you will notice a certain tension. They protest both against expanding energy supplies, claiming that fossil fuels are pushing the world into a climate apocalypse, and against restricting energy supplies, claiming that high prices are cruel to struggling families.

The tension has always lurked beneath the surface of left-wing climate activism, whose vision often imagines wealthy societies accepting a certain austerity, a retreat from the growth mindset of capitalism, a simpler, more ecologically sound way of life — all the while imagining that somehow this will only fall to the greedy, consumerist upper middle class, while the poor and working class experience the post-capitalist future more accessible, not less.

But in the energy crisis of 2022 this tension is no longer merely theoretical, an obvious crack running through a crystalline utopia. Thanks to Vladimir Putin’s war and accompanying shocks, we are having a version of the Just Stop Oil world: immediate unavailability of normal energy flows, forced transitions to alternative fuels, oil and gas prices closer than advocates more aggressive energy taxes would deem appropriate.

This reality has been widely acknowledged, but in a tone of optimism, with several European authorities and experts presenting the crisis as an opportunity for green energy, the boost the continent needs to further decarbonise. (Putin’s placement at the top of Politico Europe’s Green 28 ranking is an aggressive example of this mindset.)

But the immeasurable demands of Van Gogh’s vandals are a better guide to the new reality than the authorities’ optimism about a green future. Yes, the world has made great progress in alternative energy, which is one of the reasons existential risks from climate change have declined significantly in recent years, with worst-case scenarios becoming much less likely than before.

This progress, however, has only been possible without a decline in living standards due to the continued extraction of oil and gas, the reliable foundation on which the most variable benefits of wind and solar energy rest. And as Western leaders have moved toward “just stop oil,” limiting drilling or pipeline construction, they’ve made their societies more vulnerable to just the kind of shock we have now.

The result will likely be an object lesson in why “just stop oil” is a disastrous response to the problem of a warming world. Not just because, instead of a harmonious ecological future, we are likely to have a poorer Europe, burning more coal and wood and suffering more populist riots. Also because when higher energy prices fall heavily on citizens of a rich country like the UK, they fall even harder on developing economies.

If lack of access to energy destabilizes Western politics, in other words, we should expect even more destabilization in blackout-stricken nations like Bangladesh and Pakistan — which are now struggling to afford the rising price of natural gas.

This reality distills the whole challenge of climate change mitigation. As activists point out, the dangers of rising temperatures are unevenly distributed, with parts of the developing world facing the most severe environmental threats.

But the dangers of an economic slowdown, an era of green austerity, are also unevenly distributed — and African and Asian countries have far more to lose, compared to developed economies, from a safer future against floods and heat waves, but much poorer than it could be.

Likewise, Europe, more economically stagnant than the US and more burdened by oil and gas restrictions, has more to lose than Americans with the greener, poorer and colder world that Putin’s war ushered in.

For a long time, those who are indifferent to the climate change debate — accepting the reality of warming but doubting the sweeping policies proposed in response — have had to rely on a reasonable question: What’s the harm in a little overreaction in the face of a such a serious long-term risk?

In 2022, though, the answer is that these evils are here and their costs are ready to be paid in advance — by poorer people and countries especially, but by all of us as the Just Stop Oil movement gets a version of its wish.