Editorial: What do art-splashing stunts say about climate protests?

Just Stop Oil protesters threw tinned soup at Vincent Van Gogh's famous 1888 work Sunflowers at the National Gallery in London earlier this month. The group wants the British Government to halt new oil and gas projects. Photo / AP

EDITORIAL

The attention-grabbing tactics of activists in throwing food at famous paintings, probably only highlights the growing frustrations of a lot of climate protesters.

None of the artworks were harmed in the stunts, which targeted the Mona Lisa in the Louvre in Paris, and paintings by Monet and van Gogh in Germany and Britain. A wax statue of King Charles also copped a face-full of chocolate cake.

Because the paintings were behind glass, the protesters cleverly gained publicity in an imaginative way without alienating people sympathetic to their cause.

It’s fair to say there’s widespread frustration at the slow pace of progress in reducing emissions, heading into COP27 in Egypt from November 6.

Greenhouse gases are at record highs. This week it was reported that only two dozen of the 193 countries that agreed last year to boost measures have come up with more ambitious proposals.

The climate crisis and efforts to lessen it have seeped into various areas of life from health and transport, to farming. It is inflicting huge costs on countries worldwide.

Yet there’s insufficient will and international organisation to drastically improve the planet’s odds.

Do such ambush attacks in the name of climate action have any lasting impact? Or are they just eruptions of frustration and powerlessness?

A flaw in the art-splashing tactic is that there’s no instantly visible link between the protest target and the cause. It may not be clear that an argument is being made about what societies value.

A spokeswoman for one of the groups involved, Just Stop Oil, told the New York Times: “We tried sitting in the roads, we tried blocking oil terminals, and we got virtually zero press coverage, yet the thing that gets the most press is chucking some tomato soup on a piece of glass covering a masterpiece”.

It’s true that attempts to corner the eyes and ears of the public in a multi-platform, 24-hour media environment, are scroll-down-and-move-on events. “Going viral’ is effectively a passing shower of publicity that’s quickly swamped by something else.

Guerrilla stunts have also been an activist tool for years and people are used to them, including ones involving art.

There have also been climate-related protests in New Zealand that have involved disrupting traffic and making a scene to get a message to decision-makers. But preventing commuters and people from going about their business would not stir support for the activists and could be counterproductive.

Groundswell protesters brought tractors to city streets nationwide a week ago. Restore Passenger Rail, people wanting more public transport, have been stopping vehicles on Wellington motorways.

There’s often a divide between those focused on protest actions (such as stunts, marches, and petitions) and those involved in following through – the long-haul work to force change.

Protests on an issue such as the significance of climate change are only one strand of a web needed to achieve an end. Others include voting, consumer boycotts, lobbying, legal action, competing for the levers of power, drafting and supporting legislation, convincing people to support a goal.

But what’s lacking internationally is resources, co-ordination, and urgency even though the planet is at stake.

It’s especially stark compared to global government efforts over the pandemic, financial crisis, and Ukraine war.

It’s telling that the strongest driver of energy changes at present is a negative development - the war - as European Union countries try to move away from Russian fossil fuels. That means a crisis now, but a green transition in the longer term.

Maybe only the threat of expensive mass litigation for reparations to pay for climate damage will concentrate the minds of the wealthiest and biggest polluters.