Smashing chocolate cake on a wax figure. Throwing tomato soup at an iconic painting. These are just two of many similar recent incidents by which climate activists have generated major media coverage. Although not novel — protesters have been engaging in similar sorts of so-called enviro-vandalism for years — 2022 has seen a notable uptick, spurred largely by the formation of a U.K.-based activist group called Just Stop Oil. Although less well-known in the United States than the much larger and decentralized Extinction Rebellion (XR) movement, Just Stop Oil has quickly attracted European and, increasingly, global media attention for its members' provocative actions, which have accelerated to coincide with the ongoing 2022 U.N. Climate Change Conference, aka COP27, in Egypt.

While such tactics have attracted widespread attention, they have also split the environmental movement. On one side are those who argue that by forcing the public to pay attention to their climate change concerns, Just Stop Oil protesters are expanding public consciousness, which will lead to greater pressure on governments to take action. On the other are those who say these protesters' actions will backfire by being seen as disconnected from their cause and unnecessarily extreme, therefore dampening mainstream public support and giving authorities an excuse to ignore or portray them as radicals. Though it is too early to determine whether these protests are spurring greater action — and even if they were, establishing causation would be very difficult — the debate between these two sides boils down to something known as "the activist's dilemma."

The Activist's Dilemma

As any group that has agitated for major change — be it violently like a terrorist organization or peacefully like a protest movement — can attest, there is a delicate balance between attracting attention and sustaining support. In order to get those in power and the wider population to pay attention, a group must make its presence known. A group can never achieve its goals if it cannot demonstrate that it is a force to be reckoned with. This means that it must take steps to prove its resilience and relevance; in essence, it must generate wider backing for its cause (ideally, by gaining more members) and pressure authorities into acceding to its demands. Its best known form — in which striking workers try to generate public sympathy for their demands to help force their bosses to yield — has formed the basis of labor activism since the Industrial Revolution. 

The problem, however, is that the actions that most shock the system are frequently those that alienate the broader public and harden authorities' attitudes. This is most often the case when a group deliberately engages in a strategy of violence. For instance, even though they were careful to focus their attacks against property, not people, the so-called ecoterrorists of the 1990s, such as members of the Earth Liberation Front, quickly fell out of public favor and sparked a law enforcement crackdown in response to their wave of sabotage and property destruction. This can also happen when a larger movement, even if it eschews violence in general, becomes tainted by association with others' actions: Consider the backlash against U.S. racial justice protests in summer 2020 after some devolved into looting, vandalism and street violence. Finally, even when fully nonviolent, disruptive civil disobedience can also trigger a backlash. Insulate Britain, an XR offshoot that wants the British government to fund better insulation and otherwise retrofit homes to cut emissions, highlighted its shortcomings in a Feb. 7, 2022, public statement titled "We Must Acknowledge We Have Failed." In it, the group acknowledged that its efforts to block traffic on various highways and other key transportation nodes had neither generated much public support nor convinced the authorities to take action.

Thus, just as many others before them, climate change campaigners face a fundamental dilemma. On one hand, they must cause enough public disruption to attract attention (and hopefully new supporters), but on the other, they must not cross any red lines that would provoke a backlash. This balancing act becomes much tougher when dealing with a topic that not only has become deeply politicized but is also portrayed as a global existential threat.

Where's the Line?

With this in mind, the optimal activist strategy is to walk toward the line, but not to cross it. In other words, activists should conduct just enough provocation to get attention and support but not so much that it turns people off, something much easier said than done. What would this look like in practice?

Broadly speaking, it is helpful to think of a range of protest activities along a vertical spectrum from extreme at the top to benign at the bottom. At the most escalatory top end are premeditated acts of violence like targeted attacks. One level down would be unplanned but nonetheless violent attacks, such as street clashes that result in casualties. Just below that would be major violence against property, such as widespread looting or arson. Unsurprisingly, any of these types of violence cross a red line that harms the reputation of the perpetrator to some degree. This is particularly the case for an activist group like Just Stop Oil, which publicly preaches peaceful civil disobedience and has in part sought to build its brand on eschewing violence.

At the opposite end of this spectrum are strictly peaceful and minimally (or at least fleetingly) disruptive activities. At the very bottom, these would include stationary rallies, smaller marches and picket lines. Above these are activities that, depending on their scale, can cause greater disturbances, such as boycotts, sit-ins and strikes. Stopping traffic on major roads — a preferred recent tactic of many climate campaigners, notwithstanding Insulate Britain's self-criticism — would fall somewhere thereafter, as an action that while nonviolent can nonetheless prove extremely disruptive. Indeed, precisely because it is seen as sufficiently aggressive to generate pressure without resorting to violence, many other protest groups — ranging from truckers in Brazil to farmers in India — have used the same tactic of blocking major transportation routes to make a political point.

But despite their popularity, transit disruptions illustrate the inherent tension between attention and support that activists must weigh as they move from the more benign end of the spectrum to the more extreme one. While bringing traffic to a standstill is all but certain to generate major media coverage and keep climate change front and center in political conversation, it also inevitably complicates the lives of many people who do not feel they deserve to be on the receiving end of an hourslong traffic jam. Such actions can also have unpredictable secondary consequences that erode support: For example, earlier this month, German climate activists came under high-profile criticism (not only from Chancellor Olaf Scholz, but perhaps even more notably from leaders in the Greens party in the ruling coalition) after it emerged that a female cyclist in Berlin died when emergency services personnel reportedly could not reach her because a nearby street protest by members of the Last Generation environmental activist group delayed traffic. This brings us back to the incidents referenced at the beginning. 

Let Them Eat Cake

At first glance, and especially compared to many of these other protest activities, smashing chocolate cake on a wax figure of King Charles III or throwing tomato soup on Vincent van Gogh's "Sunflowers" painting — just two of many recent actions by Just Stop Oil protesters — hardly seem threatening. In fact, in some respects, they would appear to strike a middle ground of sparking massive global attention without really disrupting anyone's daily lives, especially when compared to things like snarling traffic or flooding the streets of city centers with protest marches. And yet these and similar actions have proved exceptionally divisive. Why?

Generally speaking, activists are more likely to succeed when their tactics and targets have a clear connection to their cause. Consider the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955-6, part of the larger U.S. civil rights campaign to end racial segregation. Following the brave action of Rosa Parks to refuse to give up her seat, most of the Black community in the city refused to ride buses for more than a year, financially slamming a system largely dependent on Black riders and eventually resulting in a federal ruling that bus segregation was unconstitutional. In that case, the tactic (boycott) and target (bus system) were perfectly aligned with civil rights campaigners' goals.

By contrast, the case of Just Stop Oil artwork vandalism is misaligned on both fronts in that both the tactics and targets seem wholly unconnected to climate change. To be sure, this is a deliberate choice by protesters because Just Stop Oil and similar groups do not feel their prior actions focusing on oil and gas companies (such as holding sit-ins outside corporate offices and blockading roads near energy infrastructure) had enough impact. But while certainly gaining more publicity by targeting culturally significant artwork, they may have traded that for losing support. Indeed, even though protesters have generally deliberately targeted artwork that is protected by glass, thereby ensuring that their deeds do not do lasting damage, many observers have interpreted even symbolic attacks on shared cultural heritage as actions that are at best misguided and at worst offensive.

One also has to wonder whether the publicity was even needed or a good strategic choice. After all, while it is clear that countries are not moving fast enough to uphold their commitments to decrease emissions, there is no denying that climate change has become a central global issue that already receives widespread attention. To this end, presumably, the people who care most deeply about it are already involved in some form of activism, whereas those who are not probably will not be convinced that they need to spring into action by high-profile artwork vandalism. This is particularly the case given the current global economic environment in which nearly all people are feeling the financial squeeze of a rising cost of living, leaving potentially even those sympathetic to Just Stop Oil's general cause feeling that now is not the time for what they perceive as media stunts.

Own Goal?

But the real challenge facing this new wave of unconventional climate activism is whether protesters can translate their activities into a coherent and effective strategy. Sure, their actions generate headlines, but so far each incident seems isolated and not part of a clear and deliberate plan to achieve campaigners' goals. Again, a comparison with the Montgomery bus boycott is instructive. At the time, civil rights campaigners created an entire organization, the Montgomery Improvement Association, to coordinate the boycott by organizing an intricate system of carpools to replace riding buses, holding weekly meetings to make adjustments as needed and deploying a deft media campaign to draw national attention to the unjustness of bus segregation. In short, their strategy was perfectly aligned with their goal.

By contrast, the current wave of artwork vandalism and other pressure tactics appear to lack strategic coherence. Unlike the Montgomery bus boycott — which was locally focused, centrally directed and centered on one key goal — today's climate activists are globally dispersed, grassroots-driven and pursuing diverse agendas that are much harder to achieve. Perhaps unsurprisingly, therefore, their message is muddled, the audience is ambiguous and the call to action is unclear. Activists can certainly cause as much shock as they want, but ultimately that is unlikely to be enough to spark the major change they desire. Indeed, the important question is not whether their tactics themselves are just, but rather whether they amount to a coherent plan of action. At least at the moment, it remains unclear that they do — and in fact, risk turning off precisely the sort of mainstream support activists need. As such, their protests may be amounting to more of an own goal than a step toward achieving the one they ostensibly seek.