Climate protests are becoming more and more bizarre. Climate protesters are becoming more and more erratic. Perhaps there is such a thing as bad publicity after all.
On Sept. 7, two climate protesters were arrested at the Arthur Ashe Stadium in New York during the Women’s U.S Open semi-final. The offense? Gluing their feet to the concrete floors of the stands.
Another example: in early October of 2022, two individuals entered the National Gallery in London and shed their overcoats to reveal T-shirts branding the name of their climate organization. They then proceeded to dump tomato soup onto one of Vincent Van Gogh’s Sunflower paintings, finishing their act by gluing their hands to the walls of the museum.
It gets worse. Just weeks later, two more protesters visited The Hague in Germany, once again equipped with tomato soup. This time, however, one of the protesters glued his head to a painting, while the other one dumped the soup over him.
It seems that climate protesters have a shared love of gluing their body parts where they should not be glued, and tomato soup. But why do climate protesters feel the need to make statements in the most absurd, and even comical ways?
The answer: attention.
These ridiculous performances are indeed quite tactful in garnering attention in the media, but perhaps it is not the kind of attention they are looking for. Dana Fisher, a Sociology professor at the University of Maryland, studies protest movements and how sociology plays a role in their assemblance. “Research shows that this kind of tactic doesn’t work to change minds and hearts,” she says.
These protesters behave like children, smashing pies in the faces of statues and planting their feet in the middle of busy roads, yet they are simultaneously attempting to appeal to bystanders. In what world can these contradictory actions be in conjunction with one another? One cannot inconvenience all those around them while actively trying to gain their support. It is simply illogical. Climate protesters’ immature tactics demean the movement as a whole. Organizations like Greenpeace go so far as to cause actual destruction in the name of protesting for the climate as well.
Los Angeles native Bilal Hakim has experienced numerous climate protests firsthand and attested to the disturbance they cause: “I have seen protests happening in real time, and watching people’s reactions proves the lack of impact that these protests have. People get more angry than anything when a protest inconveniences their life, and the message of the activists doesn’t actually sink in.”
When the media is constantly ridiculing poor attempts at protest, the entire movement against climate change is ridiculed. The movement as a whole loses its credibility, despite its vast importance and the urgency that it must be met with. These poor attempts at activism make a joke of all environmentalists, and evidently frustrate people to the point of opposing the entire movement.
Junior Katie Haas, an avid environmentalist, commented on how these protests paint the entire movement: “They make us look stupid at the bottom of it all. They are not taken seriously, and the rest of us are therefore grouped in with their immaturity. I wonder if they even take themselves seriously after pulling such ridiculous stunts.”
This is not to say that the efforts are entirely in vain, but they certainly do more harm than good. The intentions behind the protests, however, seem to make some sense, poorly executed as they are. One of the art vandalists was captured on video shouting the following: “We are in a climate catastrophe, and all you are afraid of is tomato soup on a painting.”
Ok. You have a point there.
But it is undeniable that their execution is simply ineffective. The media would rather mock climate protesters than take them seriously after such immature displays, and for a good reason: these protests are too absurd to invoke contemplation from bystanders, corporations, politicians and targeted industries. They will be too slack-jawed to even consider their perspective altogether.
Someone whose head is glued to a painting is simply not likely to be taken seriously.
Ridiculous protests are one thing, but the events these protests are interrupting have given people an entirely other reason to despise climate activists and the cause altogether. Again, the two protesters who were arrested at the women’s U.S Open semi-final managed to delay the match for almost an hour after their boisterous performance.
One of the protesters, Sayak Mukhopadhyay, doubled-down in defense of his stunt at the match after his arrest: “The climate change movement has tried everything from writing and lobbying for legislation to demonstrating and blockading banks, but none of that has been as effective as communicating directly to the public by going to public institutions like museums and sporting arenas,” he said in a statement to the New York Post.
These bizarre displays of protest may garner more attention, but it certainly is not kind they want nor need. A dire matter such as climate change mustn’t be met with such juvenile stunts if they are to be taken seriously.
