Such as they even have a policy position, Just Stop Oil is advocating that governments ban all oil and gas contracts without a referendum or popular vote or even any elected officials.
Ostensibly the organization is about political mobilization. But they haven't actually endorsed a candidate or secured a referendum or achieved anything vaguely democratic. Which I am not saying they have to do. But claiming they are on democracy's side seems a bit premature.
they're clearly organized and acting to influence public opinion and provide policy suggestions to elected representatives. public advocacy and communication to elected representatives are part of the democratic process.
they have already achieved their first policy goal: the UK no longer issues new oil and gas drilling permits.
They are influencing me the other way. Every time I see one of their stunts I turn down my AC 5 degrees and run my car in my driveway for an hour. Doing my part to carbon offset their shenanigans.
They are smart enough to recognize obvious sarcasm…and as such they wouldn’t take it literally but instead would get my underlying message that defacing priceless art might be counterproductive to motivating people support your cause, but instead might have an opposite effect.
are you happy with their recent achieved policy goal, blocking new drilling permits? if yes, perhaps your frustration is misplaced. notably, no art was actually defaced, so if that's your point of contention, it's all good.
can you identify or share some more effective tactics?
it seems to me that espousing an opposing position is likely less effective than almost any explicitly supportive tactic, so please be careful with that.
I don’t approve of any goals by any organization that choose tactics that involve vandalism and damage to anything.
Additionally tactics that result in anyone not directly affiliated with the targets of the org being intentionally inconvenienced through traffic stoppage or other public disruption techniques.
Further I don’t believe that an energy policy that doesn’t at least partially rely on petroleum resources for decades to come is an ignorant position to take and by attempting to force a direction that is doomed to fail through these awful tactics will do more harm than good.
So no…in no way to I approve of their goals and I hope their tactics create a backlash that has a domino effect of causing their cause to fail.
