The Oilers are Wrong

 The Just Stop Oilers have been at it again, this time spraying orange paint on a number of government buildings. Blind to the negative attention this attracts, they inconvenience people just trying to go to work, create an unsightly mess, almost certainly incur fossil fuel costs in the clean up and security reactions… and do absolutely nothing to further their aims.

But what are their aims? It doesn’t seem very joined-up to simply demand an end to all new oil and gas contracts without proposing alternatives. Ceasing to use fossil fuel is an impossibility for any civilisation which doesn’t want to return, very quickly, to a scavenging, hand-to-mouth existence. We can’t support a population of our size without energy dense solutions and the capacity and intermittency of so-called green paradigms renders them at best a partial assist.

The Oilers appear to believe we can instantly switch to a low-carbon lifestyle. Maybe the many apparent pensioners involved in their movement have already feathered their nests with solar photovoltaic panels, heat pumps, super-dooper insulation, heat recovery systems and the like, and can boast of excellent climate-healing credentials. But at what cost?

And when I say cost I don’t just mean that they can afford it after a lifetime in the petrochemical age of relative affluence, while others still in work can barely pay their monthly bills, which hypocrisy bodes ill for their ultimate redemption. I also mean at what cost to the environment? Because those technologies built in the East, using coal-fire electricity and shipped here burning millions of barrels of oil, represent a massive carbon footprint which their deployment will almost certainly not offset in their lifetime.

The people who install much of this technology are poorly equipped to explain the benefits, or do the holistic calculus, but they don’t need to. The media – equally ignorant of the full facts – merrily trots out the green is good mantra, oblivious to the harm they may be doing. I would absolutely love to live off-grid, sustainably, self-sufficiently, with a minimal carbon footprint, but I will never be able to afford it. And likely, neither can you.

So, once again I ask, what do they really want? Most rational people, when bumping against reality, learn to adapt their ambitions. Only fools keep on doing the same wrong thing over and over again, rolling the dice, in the hope that this time the house doesn’t win. But the house always wins, no matter how much orange paint you spray.

What does he think he's achieving?

For what it’s worth I think we need a massive education programme. Not ‘re-education’, instilling doctrinal soundbites, but actual education. If people understood the physics, the nature of energy itself they may be able to make better, more informed choices about how they manage their lives. The same could apply to financial decisions, health, and voting in elections. Education, education, education? Dream on.

Just Stop Protesting

The South-East of this country was brought to a standstill by Just Stop Oil protesters climbing the Queen Elizabeth Bridge at Dartford yesterday. The business where I work was disrupted enormously; I imagine the wider economic chaos is incalculable. But the one thing which will not have been achieved is any increase in support for this renegade band of idiots, determined to damage the world in which they live.

But who will have suffered the most? Not the government, not the establishment, not the millionaires and billionaires, not the local authorities, not the schools, not the judiciary, not the policy advisors, not the very oil companies they seek to destroy … in fact none of the people who have any input whatsoever into decision-making around our energy policy.

The people who were harmed would almost certainly be on the lower rungs of the socio-economic ladder, those who have no power at all. Those casual workers in the gig economy who will not have been paid. Those waiting for urgent deliveries which arrived late or not at all. Those reliant on care by people stuck for hours in traffic. Those small business owners whose productivity and profits were dented but whose costs were not. Some people may even have died as a direct result of the disruption.

The first instinct for many would have been that the bridge climbers should have been shot – snipers being an excellent first resort in the frustration of the moment. But why close the bridge? Seriously, why not just leave them up there? Ready the police and maybe a standby ambulance, but just observe and let them sit out their vigil for as long as their reserves of strength hold out. Starvation, hypothermia, who cares? We do not have unlimited reserves of sympathy for those who have, in their hysteria, taken such stupid risks.

And why not treat all such protesters in the same way? Glue yourself to the road? Why don’t the police immobilise them with builder’s expanding foam filler and let the traffic take its toll? Throwing soup at a Van Gogh? Make soup out of them. Throwing paint on a car dealership? Strip the fuckers and paint them in creosote. Vandalise property? Vandalise their property. As long as we react to these protests in the soft way they know we will, they will never stop.

Never mind that the general public despise them, their intention is to be despised. They want our outrage and our impotence. But their further aim, to stop all new oil and gas projects, will not be achieved by these means. If anything, the efforts to limit the damage they cause is likely to involve a higher carbon cost, much like the jet-setting CoP circus which achieves little beyond making headlines.

Each year the gross amount of carbon dioxide emitted increases, even as western governments commit to the accounting fraud they call net zero. As with so many areas of national life, being seen to act is far more important to governments than to actually do anything effective. In this the protesters are no better than those they protest against. Sure, they may get a warm, fuzzy glow in the heat of their vandalism, but in the cold light of day they have achieved nothing.