Are Just Stop Oil being paid by the oil companies?
Rufus T Firefly
Shipmate
in Hell
I have come to the conclusion that Just Stop Oil are actually being funded by the like of Esso and BP. That seems to be the only way to explain why they consistently do things that going to alienate the general public, rather than get people on their side.
The latest stupid stunt? Stonehenge sprayed in orange powder paint by Just Stop Oil activists
What kind of moronic fool thinks this is - in any way - a "good idea"?
If you are protesting about something, you want people to come on your side. You want people to say "Yes! I agree with you! I want to join your cause!" You don't want ordinary people to say "What fucking idiots did this? They should be shot."
As someone who is very definitely on the side of environmentalists against the oil corporations, can I just say to Just Stop Oil - well done! You've made me want to go out and buy the biggest gas-guzzler car I can find. The best thing you could do for the environment would be to jump in the sea - at least then your body would decompose and provide nutrients for sea life.
The latest stupid stunt? Stonehenge sprayed in orange powder paint by Just Stop Oil activists
What kind of moronic fool thinks this is - in any way - a "good idea"?
If you are protesting about something, you want people to come on your side. You want people to say "Yes! I agree with you! I want to join your cause!" You don't want ordinary people to say "What fucking idiots did this? They should be shot."
As someone who is very definitely on the side of environmentalists against the oil corporations, can I just say to Just Stop Oil - well done! You've made me want to go out and buy the biggest gas-guzzler car I can find. The best thing you could do for the environment would be to jump in the sea - at least then your body would decompose and provide nutrients for sea life.
Comments
Rather like 'winning hearts and minds' by razing villages to the ground.
Well, at least they've exposed your commitment to environmentalism to be about an inch deep.
Yes, although at least orange powder paint will fade/wash off, without harming Stonehenge. Mr Firefly's new gas-guzzler may well shorten a few human lives, though, with its emissions (and weight, if it should be so unfortunate as to have a pedestrian pass in front of it).
The ones who protest against climate disaster, those who want protesters to be shot, or those who contribute to higher emissions by buying gas-guzzlers?
The paint is water soluble. The Stonehenge account was tweeting furiously about damage to the lichen. I wonder what sort of damage a 2.5 degree rise in temperature will cause.
This.
Is the lichen likely to be permanently damaged, or even killed? It's tough stuff, and may well still be around (along with the cockroaches) when all other life has been destroyed, whether by climate apocalypse or nuclear apocalypse.
Do you not comprehend the concept of sarcasm?
I do feel that there are more deserving places to attract publicity though - the London Stock Exchange or Lloyds spring to mind. I feel the Venn diagram of people who don't care about the environment and people who don't care about Stonehenge may be larger in area than Just Stop Oil think.
Ben Elton in his book, This Other Eden uses the basic idea in the OP as a plot device. Though the two groups are made up. The principle is the same. He leaves it nearly the end of the book to show it.
Spoiler Warning off
Yes perfectly, but in this case it was a rather poor effort because it maps to genuinely expressed sentiments in the wild.
I think you are misunderstanding what JSO are trying to do. Their position is that the 'debate' on climate change is settled, and everyone who is likely to be persuaded already has been, that large scale change is held back because of the carbon heavy industries, and the only thing they can do is raise the costs of extraction, operation etc.
This position is stupid.
First, it is false. Although the debate has been long "settled" in academic circles, it is less settled amongst the general public, and even among those members of the general public who are generally in agreement with the scientific consensus, there's a range of understandings of the urgency of taking particular actions.
In other words, JSO's "you're either with us or against us" position is so far away from the actual practical truth that they are guilty of culpable stupidity.
There are a large number of people who are broadly supportive of environmental concerns, and are willing to put themselves to small, but not large, inconveniences to be environmentally conscious.
I'm probably one of them. Last time I bought a car, buying one that was relatively fuel-efficient and not larger / heavier than I need were part of my criteria for selecting a car. Perhaps next time I buy a car, it will be electric, but it wouldn't be today.
Why not?
1. The lack of basic electric vehicles. I don't want an expensive "luxury" car. I want functional reliable transportation. Car manufacturers are (understandably, because they want to make money) going after the expensive end of the market first. There's very little at the economy end of the market, and what there is has such a small range that it's only viable as a local-driving only car. Except that it's not priced realistically to match its limited capabilities.
2. Charging time. We've had this discussion before, but charge times for long drives need to be comparable to gas-tank filling times, not "you must stop for a leisurely coffee and a snack at whatever overpriced vendor is located by a roadside fast charger every two hours". Charging 200 miles in 5 minutes would work for me. That's three times the headline speed of a Tesla Supercharger (which is an optimistic advertising number).
Numpties gluing themselves to roads, throwing paint at paintings and monuments isn't going to change any of this. It's just destructive and annoying. (And doesn't actually do anything to increase the marginal cost of using oil.)
There's no 'settling' the debate among the general public, as the public generally don't come to a conclusion based on objective consideration of climate science. On this as on many other issues, public opinion has hardened and follows other political alignments.
Or probably not. After all, by what you go on to describe you are fundamentally driven by the desire to buy a smallish car with low upfront and running costs; so you would have come to approximately the same decision anyway.
No shade on you, the changes needed are systemic and beyond the scope of individual consumer choices, and however concerned the 'broadly supportive' are, they generally don't express this support at the levels of salience required to bring about political change.
If you have a better plan, I'm waiting for it (this doesn't include listing everything else that has been tried and failed over the last 3/4 decades), until then I'm not going to be overly censorious of those who try other means, especially if they are going to have to cope with climate change long after the rest of us are gone.
We locked down the entire country in the hope of preventing less than one million deaths - but seem to treat the threat of extinction as a minor inconvenience, they have a point.
"We should do something. This is something. Therefore we should do this."
WHY does anyone protest? To bring a matter to the public attention? But WHY do you want to do that? The fundamental answer is that you want something to change. And in a democratic country, that means that you want there to be such a public demand for change that any party seeking government MUST have a plan for effecting that change.
Therefore, you want your protest to be such that increasing numbers of people will be saying to the political parties "I agree with them. You won't get my vote unless you show that you are going to take action on this."
JSO fail at this basic level. Instead of people asking the parties "What are you going to do about this?" the overwhelming response of people is "What a bunch of numpties. They should just be locked up and ignored." Their actions are achieving the very opposite of what they need. Either they are complete fuckwits or they are being manipulated by "the dark forces of the oil industry" . I can see no other answer.
How did they travel to Stonehenge?
How was the orange powder paint and its cannister made?
Because I bet that all needed oil.
I want to decrease the environmental impact of my life by consuming and using less of everything but it feels a bit eccentric somehow.
I wonder whether electric cars are any more environmentally friendly than petrol, all things considered.
Annoying protests will neither delay nor accelerate it.
My question is how its effects will be met by our leaders as it intensifies; not well I suspect.
I don't know. Obviously the source of the electricity (i.e. renewable/nuclear/fossil fuel) - but then there's also the environmental impact of building more power stations and expanding the National Grid. Exhaust pollution is obviously minimised which must be a good thing.
There's also an impact in building new vehicles: it may be better to hang on to an old petrol car until it's life-expired than to scrap it in favour of a new electric car.
Electric vehicles have the advantage (I think) that retardation charges the battery rather than simply being lost as head through braking; they also have a simple drive train with good torque on starting but have to carry around a heavy battery.
There are many factors to be considered. The declaration on the side of this bus is, I think, a tad ingenuous: a bit like saying that the NHS is "free". https://tinyurl.com/96vun5st
this is where part of my brain wonders 'have they run the numbers on what it will look like when every vehicle is electric and trying to charge?'
not because I want to make any particular point, just because it's the obvious question!
They have, and there is a need for increased grid capacity long term, hence the grid upgrades to bring in extra power from the Highlands and Islands and from the North Sea.
Re hydrogen: am I right in thinking that, at the moment, vehicle hydrogen has to be tanked in by diesel lorries?
I think that's just a feature of what happens when technologies change over - the navy had sailing colliers taking coal to the global coaling stations as steam came in, and then coal fired oilers as oil came in. *If* hydrogen (or anything else) were to take off, there's almost inevitably going to be a period where the legacy tech is providing the spine for the new.
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Of that I know not, but I do know that electrolysis of water to produce hydrogen is going to be less efficient than using that hydrogen directly.
Yes ... in the early days of motor cars petrol was probably brought in by horse and cart!
As an aside, Taylor Swift's jet landed there last night; apparently there have for weeks been mutterings on social media about her current tour's carbon footprint. She wowed 70,000 fans in Cardiff the other night - I bet they didn't all come by bike, either (and some came from the other side of the world).
And what impact will the Olympics have? No-one seems to be asking that.
However, with its simplistic demand, Just Stop Oil is the Reform of the climate movement. It's mere gesture politics, and the gestures don't even have any bearing on the cause they are making. Even if their simplistic solution was sound, which it isn't, there is no rational connection between attacking a historic document or potentially damaging a world heritage monument and stopping oil.
Their actions give the entire movement a bad name. It distracts attention from all the good and useful things that countless other people have been doing and are doing to wean the world off destructive uses of technology and mitigate their effect on the climate. It also gives people like the actual Reform and Trumpists an excuse to ignore the threats to which the world is subject and just ridicule themselves and others out of doing what needs doing.
So private jets are part of the *national infrastructure*? Who knew? Apart from Wishi-Washi and some of his minions - and yes, I did read that the evil beer-swilling Starmer also used one recently, so fans of the Sun or the Daily Wail don't need to remind me...
Ah, of course. One of my favourite family photos is of Ma being arrested by a very angry policeman, who is brandishing the bolt-cutters with which Ma had cut through the fence at Greenham Common...
As a result of this wicked piece of anti-state criminal action, she spent a few weeks in Jug (not for the first time - she was quite good at being arrested for protesting against nuclear weapons).
Anyone who has spent time among political activists of any stripe knows that there is always a certain subset who are completely clueless as to how their destructive and disruptive actions are perceived by the public. The logic, such as it is, seems to be "It must be obvious to everyone how important this cause is, so they'll understand if I toss a brick through the window of their favorite shop."
In the case of Just Stop Oil, the activists seem to think that there is a section of public opinion who are NOT at the moment sufficiently supportive of climate action, but WILL become more supportive as a result of hearing the usual slogans shouted in conjunction with the vandalism of famous artwork. Not a proven thesis, I would say.
You get a modest energy efficiency advantage for efficient power station / efficient electric motor over less efficient petrol engine, even when you include transmission and battery inefficiencies. Obviously the gain is much greater if your electricity comes from windmills. You give some back because electric cars are heavier, but I think it's still a small win.
If you don't drive your car far or often, this is obviously true.
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/when-do-electric-vehicles-become-cleaner-than-gasoline-cars-2021-06-29/
From this article, production of a "representative" EV generates 8.1 Mg of CO2. Burning petrol creates 2.3 kg of CO2 per litre, so the energy cost of a new EV is equivalent to close to 4,000 litres of petrol. I think for the UK generation mix, and when you roll all the efficiencies up, an petrol car generates about three times as much CO2 per mile as an EV.
So there's your comparison. Buying a new EV immediately costs you the equivalent of 4,000 litres of petrol, but then you earn it back at a rate of 2/3 of your consumption in your petrol car. So you break even at the point where you would have used 6,000 litres of petrol.
With petrol running around £1.50 per litre, that's when you would have spent £9,000 on petrol. (For my personal car, this would be filling the tank 200 times. I typically fill up once every three weeks, so I would take 11 years to break even in CO2.)
You break even in CO2 production well before you break even in money.
I use my car (a 2015 Ford Fiesta) every other day or so, simply to go to the shops - the furthest being two miles away - so my annual mileage is very low. I use £30 worth of petrol every three or four weeks, as the short local journeys are less efficient (AIUI) than longer runs.
(Being disabled, I can't use bicycle or bus, I'm afraid).
Do you put £30 in to keep the tank full, or £30 every time you start running out?
I’ve a half buried memory from the forces - that I still act on (whether it’s true or I’ve remembered it right or not I don’t know but I act on it) that the former is better for the health of the engine than running down to the dregs all the time - so there might be an efficiency angle too I guess.
Can you tell I’m not a scientist?
I put in £30 when the needle of the petrol gauge reaches the red line (about another 30 or 40 miles of driving!), but it's not a full tank's worth. Your memory from the forces may be right, of course.
Yeah, I mean, Stonehenge is so OBVIOUSLY the product of a pre-industrial culture, there's no real logical way it can be linked, even symbolically, to climate change.
Granted, I gather the point is that all these artistic works will mean nothing if the climate apocalypse happens, and that would include Stonehenge as well. Though I think the optics are a little better if you're attacking stuff associated with the western tradition that, at least in the popular understanding, gave rise to industrialization as we know it.
And I've just been watching a far-right commentator on YouTube(*), who pointed out that the ecosystem on the slabs of Stonehenge is quite unique, thus making it an especially stupid target for environmentalists.
(*) Don't really concur with his overall analysis, which is something like "Look at all the woke establishment leftists applauding this vandalism, but if it was Tommy Robinson doing it, oh boy, he'd be jailed for life." I'm pretty sure the people who vandalized stonehenge will be prosecuted with all due diligence.
The carbon emissions of manufacture of an EV are about 0.88 tonnes (https://www.acea.auto/figure/co2-emissions-from-car-production-in-eu/). So the manufacturing environmental cost would be wiped out by the first 9,300 km or 5,780 miles (about 7 months at our current mileages).
In terms of financial cost, a 2yo Buzz costs around £47,700 and a 2yo Galaxy about £21,000. The mileage costs are for the Galaxy about 17.9p/mile, and for the Buzz about Buzz 10.4p/mile. So the Buzz saves about 7.5p/mile (https://www.zap-map.com/tools/journey-cost-calculator).
Given that we don’t have to replace the Galaxy at the moment it would take 636,000 miles of driving to cover the total cost of the Buzz (about 67 years at our current mileage). If we needed to replace the Galaxy now, then the price difference between the two of £26,700 would be covered by about 356,000, or in about 37 years at our current mileage.
The idea that cornstarch is going to harm the various lichens (none of which are completely unique) over and above the existing wear and tear the stones endure (including their regular dousing with olive oil by 'King Arthur') sounds like a reach.
This is even before you consider possible damage from the A303 work with the associated stripping of World Heritage Status.
I suppose it's been useful at exposing more than a few people's inner reactionary though.