Five reasons why Just Stop Oil should disrupt the All Blacks and Rugby World Cup

OPINION:

Kris Shannon runs through five reasons why Just Stop Oil should disrupt the Rugby World Cup.

1. They have it coming

There will be something missing when the All Blacks run out at Stade de France on Saturday morning.

Commercial restrictions prevent the logos of petrochemical company Ineos and construction outfit Altrad — a self-described leader in the oil and gas sector — from taking their typical spot on the players’ bodies, replaced by all those clipart ferns.

Fortunately for an oil industry getting by on record profits, it will still enjoy representation at the Rugby World Cup, with French fossil fuel giant TotalEnergies sponsoring the event.

In the context of these arrangements, could an unthinkable act become understandable? Could a rugby game be briefly disrupted, maybe a bit of orange brightening up the black?

A sin to even suggest, no doubt, but the last time we saw British activist group Just Stop Oil on a big sporting stage, England wicketkeeper Jonny Bairstow was labelled an Ashes hero for carrying one invader off the pitch.

Saturday is the most anticipated opening match in the history of this tournament; a grander stage than even Lord’s. This a chance for the All Blacks to be lauded for their carrying capabilities, a chance to begin their challenge with a display of strength and oh yeah also remind millions watching the world is on fire.

2. Sport, the power is yours

A reminder is hardly needed. This year has delivered an astonishing array of weather disasters, too innumerable to list or — if you are a serious person — deny.

What may need strengthening in some minds is that a continuing embrace of the oil industry will only exacerbate our climate crisis.

That’s kind of Just Stop Oil’s whole thing. Attach the expletive of your choice, but saying or writing those three words spreads the message.

It’s a message that sports would be wise to disseminate. On the eve of their world championships last month, three-quarters of track and field athletes reported their competition or training had already been impacted by the changing climate.

Gotham FC, a football team based in New York, has this season had games delayed or rescheduled by a hurricane, thunderstorms and wildfires.

These are trifles next to the number displaced by wind or water or fire or whatever else Captain Planet went on about. Sport, for many, has ceased being an escape; reality has intruded.

A rugby game is small when compared to, say, heat inhospitable to human life, but it’s not inconsequential. A disruption of a few minutes will have an effect beyond the rending of garments — and should be considered a legitimate response to a climate emergency.

3. Direct action is morally just

Damage is baked in, deterioration inevitable, but it can be limited. Yet inaction both internationally and at home — where the major parties will raid the climate kitty for whatever helps win an election — steadily increases the degree of difficulty.

Who can blame those maddened by fecklessness from our leaders? Why feel aggrieved at anyone risking a good kicking, online and possibly by Sam Cane, to drop glitter on an unamused athlete?

Accepting a quick and colourful interruption to an All Black world isn’t asking much. Not when more urgent, drastic action is required.

That’s the argument made in the incendiary thriller How to Blow Up a Pipeline, an inclusion at this year’s New Zealand International Film Festival.

Based on a non-fiction book by Swedish professor Andreas Malm, the movie asserts that property damage and sabotage — including the titular act — is a morally just weapon in the fight for environmental justice.

If that sounds unreasonable, it’s reasonable to wonder what else is dissuading the people making this mess worse. Big oil collects its billions; climate pledges are broken. The planet gets hotter.

Ineos and Altrad will be consigned to the training ground. Photo / Getty Images

4. Forget about Phelps

This may disappoint those mired in the culture wars, or those with profit incentive to stoke the flames, but the climate crisis can’t be debated away.

People are suffering and that will persist, in New Zealand and particularly in the global south, whose residents bear no blame for an industrial-world addiction to burning fossil fuels. We’ll keep watching calamities on TV until there’s one right outside.

But since this is ostensibly a sports column, we should look beneath recent eye-catching events and examine the underlying numbahh shit they bad too.

Records are falling with a frequency unseen since peak Michael Phelps. July was the world’s hottest month on record, it featured likely the warmest 20-day stretch in 100,000 years, and July 6 brought the highest average global temperature for a single day.

Among countries setting new heat marks in 2023: Morocco, Thailand, Turkey and China, which also registered its coldest temperature. In January, Heilongjiang, in the northeast, fell to -53C; six months later, Xinjiang, in the northwest, hit 52.2C.

Congrats to China. We share the gold medal.

5. Sport is theatre

To end on a sunnier note, even the most ardent opposition to Just Stop Oil must concede the group’s tactics are delightfully theatrical.

The deployment of puzzle pieces, the triumphant raised fist in the locked arms of Bairstow, absurd phrases like ‘glitter attack’…it’s all additive to the on-field entertainment.

If mean protesters are raising the blood pressure, remember sport is only a game and take a breath before condemning future generations to misery.

Enjoy this World Cup, no matter what happens. Hopefully, as the All Blacks march to victory, we’ll be treated to some dude handing Cane a beautiful bunch of orange flowers, the skipper’s kicking foot starting to quiver.

Kris Shannon has been a sports journalist since 2011 and covers a variety of codes for the Herald. Reporting on Grant Elliott’s six at Eden Park in 2015 was a career highlight.