Just Stop Oil: everything you need to know
Jigsaw puzzles and tinsel at Wimbledon. Orange powder at Lords. Paint all over Total’s offices in Canary Wharf. Sit-ins and go slows. Just Stop Oil is everywhere at the moment and to say its members have a unique attitude to public relations is putting it mildly. They have a genius for both grabbing attention and infuriating ordinary punters whether they’re blocking people from getting to doctor’s appointments or trying to wreck a long-awaited day out at the cricket. They’re also deeply priggish, self-righteous and self-absorbed as their ransom demands around last weekend’s Pride march demonstrated. This is all a bit of shame because the group’s attention-seeking and occupation of the moral high ground masks three important questions: Who is Just Stop Oil? What does Just Stop Oil want? Is Just Stop Oil right?
Just Stop Oil defines itself as a non-violent Civil Resistance movement. Its target is the UK government and, specifically, the UK Government’s issuing of new oil and gas licences. It believes that, “allowing the extraction of new oil and gas resources in the UK is an obscene and genocidal policy that will kill our children and condemn humanity to oblivion.” It also argues that, “in eight years we need to end our reliance on fossil fuels completely. The transition will require massive investment in clean technology, renewables and energy storage…we need to cut energy demand by insulating Britain and rethinking how we travel including providing free public transport everywhere.” It concludes by framing the choice open to society as stark in the extreme: it’s either a “rapid transition to a low energy and low carbon world, or social collapse. We can do it now, in an orderly manner – creating millions of proper skilled jobs and protecting the rights of workers in sunset industries – or we wait for the unavoidable collapse.”
As these extracts show, Just Stop Oil is really a political movement. Funded through its own efforts and the international Climate Emergency Fund, its target is much wider than the licensing efforts of the UK’s Department for Business. What its really aiming for is what sounds like a fundamental restructuring of society and doing so – with its prioritising of the rights of workers and all-encompassing faith in the power of the state – from the left. It’s no surprise that its programme, which appears deeply radical on the surface, looks a lot like Sir Keir Starmer’s recently announced vision for energy in the UK. In the end, it isn’t really radical because the group has something else in common with Starmer’s Labour Party – a complete unwillingness to be serious about the challenge that lies ahead.
Just Stop Oil’s justification for the inconvenience it causes is well-written and passionate but it’s also just a few paragraphs long. There’s nothing about skills, innovation, jobs, planning, the national grid, the future of travel, use of plastics, manufacture of medicines, Just Transition or funding: it’s a simple one note blast on a loud trumpet that says Just Stop Oil. If you were caught in a discussion in a pub with a Just Stop Oil protestor, anyone over the age of seven would have them in an intellectual half-Nelson in seconds. I can guarantee that none of them would know that, at this lunchtime, just 25% of energy in the UK is being produced from fossil fuels.
However, while its arguments may be simplistic and verging on the vacuous, are they wrong? Truthfully, while I dislike its antics intensely and wish the campaigners would use their passion more productively, they have right on their side. If you believe in man-made climate change – and after the hottest June globally on record, you really should – then Just Stop Oil is potentially like unpopular protestors of the past who also ruined sporting events: the Suffragettes. In the UK, as this column has said many times, we have made a great deal of progress with renewable energy especially with regard to offshore wind but there’s much more we could be doing especially around energy demand and especially in winter.
But this is an international issue too: the world is simply not thinking about what it’s consuming. On 6 June 2023, the International Energy Agency issued an update on Global Oil Markets in which it said that they thought that oil consumption would increase by “1.6 million barrels per day in 2023 and 1.7 million barrels per day in 2024, led by growth in non-OECD Asia.” That’s an increase of roughly 2% this year and next year and is anything but stopping oil. Don’t be surprised then if our orange-clad friends start to go global.
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