Greenhouse gas emissions continue to trigger global warming. For this reason, activists say that climate change also threatens the habitats of living things. In other words, these activists want to show all of us the extent of the damage done to nature by human hands. Our technologies, which we have not left nature alone, have developed; They also say that nature’s revenge will be bitter if we do not prioritize sustainable environmental understanding.
While it is good that they are basically fighting to protect nature, the actions taken by some activist groups recently have caused people not to take them seriously. Well, let’s see what would have happened if these activists had shown their reactions in a more sensible way rather than in such reactionary ways.
Note: First of all, you should know that we are not criticizing climate activism in this article. We criticize the recent involvement of some climate activists on social media with their interesting actions. While reading this article, we would like you to read it considering that we only criticize the actions taken.
Mona Lisa, The Last Supper, Primavera, and now they attacked Van Gogh’s Sunflowers painting.
The stars of these activists did not reconcile with the arts. In recent months, the activist, who threw a cake at the Mona Lisa painting exhibited at the Louvre Museum, said that we should protect the world more than art. Yet another similar incident came from the activist group Just Stop Oil. Sticking to Da Vinci’s The Last Supper, activists demanded that oil and gas licenses in the UK be stopped.
Of course, the events did not end there. The activist group Ultima Generazione (The Last Generation) continued the tradition of attacking works of art and haunted Botticelli’s Primavera painting. All that aside, the attack by the activists on Van Gogh’s work a few days ago made me give up.
Two members of the Just Stop Oil group threw instant soup on the work called Sunflowers. These people then stuck themselves to the wall and started chanting slogans. For those who don’t know, let’s summarize as follows: These activists gave a speech on the theme of “Is art or human life important?” In short, “Stop all activities that may create a climate crisis. They want to say, ‘Introduce a more sustainable energy production’. But in order to say this, do we have to engage in such negative behaviors?
First of all, “Why did you choose art as a target?” you have to ask the question.
It makes no sense to damage works of art to create environmental awareness. And we’ve already passed them all, it’s something we’re really curious about why soup was thrown at Van Gogh’s work. We can say that Gogh went through very difficult times during his lifetime and almost never smiled at his art.
This artist is a person who could not even get paid properly for the works he produced during his lifetime and became popular after his death. So think about it, living like this in the current capitalist system means being considered one of the lowest strata of the system. In short, his works should have been the last thing to be targeted.
Now, let’s give a short break and look at what environmental groups aiming to protect the environment want to tell us, independently of these actions, from a sociological background:
Human and nature interaction causes nature to be damaged due to human activities. Which means that we often incur irreversible ecological losses. Yes, we know that there is an acceptance that nature has a self-renewing structure, which continued from the Enlightenment Period of the 17th century to the 19th century.
However, when we look at it from today’s window, it is a little difficult to say that nature is in a position to renew itself. Because the dimensions of the domination established over nature by human hands are now at a very advanced level.
In fact, we can say that Western culture, which adopted the motto of “development and progress” with the modern period, had a system of thought that never hesitated to use natural resources for economic growth. In fact, researcher John Bellamy Foster, who analyzed the texts of the sociologist, economist and philosopher Karl Marx, says that Marx used the concept of metabolic cleavage to express the damage that economic growth and production relations cause to the environment.
He gives as an example the situation where the conflict of interests of the bourgeois landowners with the proletarian farmers over the artificial fertilization technique deteriorates the fertility of the land. As you can see, the ‘artificial’ is always harmful to the natural.
I don’t want to bore you too much with such more theoretical perspectives. However, it is useful to give this framework so that we can see the aspects of the actions under the name of activism that we discuss in this article, which are actually contrary to climate activism.
Now, another problem of today’s capitalist system is excessive specialization (eg, the continuous use of trees, various plants as subjects under scientific innovation, the construction of various production factories in a natural area, the construction of thermal power plants / all of these show us the damage done by technocratic rationality to nature) Let’s calculate the extent of the damage to the environment caused by an endless trust.
Let me give a brief example on this subject through sociologist Ulrich Beck’s Risk Society Theory: Beck says that today, democratic politics has been replaced by the politics of different interest groups and companies. The fact that these groups also have a perception of continuous excess wealth-property accumulation leads to further cultural, environmental, social and scientific corruption. Thus, ‘manufactured’ risks emerge that are not natural.
In other words, we produce risks with our own hands and for capitalist purposes, says the theorist. The initiatives we make for our interests, like the boomerang, come back to us as epidemic diseases, immigration, population problems, chemical diseases, destruction of nature and death.
For example, chemical wastes leaking from factories, fumes leaking from the chimneys of automobile manufacturing factories not only trigger global warming, but also reduce the quality of the oxygen we breathe. In other words, the destruction of the natural environment means the destruction of people, animals, plants and many other living things.
In fact, we end up with the same thing again: The desire for continuous progress and growth leads us to destroy the finite natural resources that we think are endless.
Naturally, climate activists also react to this. “Let’s protect nature because we live in it,” they say. Activists think that we have no right to harm nature, that we try to slaughter it instead of respecting it, and therefore we are guilty. They are not wrong about this.
In fact, some environmental justice groups, any famine, thirst, etc. that may arise in the damage we do to nature. He says that in such cases, those who will be most adversely affected will be the poor, who are at the bottom of the capitalist system. Think about it, when there is such a philosophy in the background of environmentalism, it does not make sense for those who walk around as an environmentalist to prefer actions that harm works of art.
For one thing, art is one of the most appropriate activities for a person or group to have their voice heard. These activists could have given us the message that we should protect nature by making art instead of harming art. Moreover, while chanting slogans in an interesting way, they do not hesitate to express that art is more valuable than human life or the world.
The people whose works they harm are people who have introduced themselves, their philosophies and life stories to the world through their art. Maybe if they had tried to take inspiration from them, they would have thought before throwing cake or soup at the works. Because if they did, they wouldn’t have faced so many negative reactions. Those who carried out these actions unfortunately tarnished the overall image of climate activism.
So they did what they were against. Those who think that we are killing nature with the technologies we use, took a fabricated soup (it is a product of food technologies, after all) and attacked art, which is one of the most effective ways to protect culture, social and environmental values. For example, when you look at the images of the two activists in this soup-throwing action, you can guess that they are in an age group that you can call high school at most.
When we consider the psychology of these ages, we can say that situations such as impulsivity and acting without thinking are common, as everyone knows. For this reason, people who will create environmental awareness should not consist of young people who have not yet completed their personal development. Because when these people’s thoughts about life are not fully settled, their attempts like this may cause them to regret in their adulthood.
Yes, there are child activists too. But it is clear that many of them are guided by their parents. Of course, a discussion area opens here such as “Is it ethical or not to raise children as activists, does this prevent them from living their childhood like other children?” I think that this issue should definitely be addressed by experts in the field.
If we go back to the Just Stop Oil activists, we can say that they still do not sit still and continue to bullshit. Activists threw paint at the Aston Martin store in London and blocked the way of people passing by. We can say that this example justifies the intense reaction of society to climate activism. actions of climate activists; I think it should not connote violence or bullying. On the contrary, they need to adopt a more peaceful and naive attitude.
Because, isn’t harming nature also a kind of violent attack? When you throw soup at a work of art or paint on the wall of a store, you are not actually stopping those who are harming nature. Just like they did, you are polluting the environment again. The environment is not only a natural resource, but the architectural structures we live in are also our artificial environment. When the artificial environment is polluted, the natural environment is always damaged.
After environmental activists, some people who define themselves as vegan, spill milk, which angered people.
Vegans are a group that completely refuses to consume animal products, and in fact, their thinking is based on kindness. Vegans, who entered a market in the UK recently, spilled the milk in the market. The absurd action of some vegans, who tried to raise awareness of people not to use animal food, attracted a lot of attention. Think about it, an employee of the market may have to clean up the milk they spilled on that floor.
Moreover, perhaps even the money for spilled milk can be deducted from the employee’s salary. In other words, that action is unfortunately not an action that ends the capitalist system that makes nature and animals objects of consumption. On the contrary, it causes harm to the market owner. The people to whom he will allocate this loss may be none other than the workers, as I have just mentioned. In short, this situation does nothing but help turn the wheels of capitalism.
In fact, a vegan group had entered the market and left roses on the meat before. For example, this action makes people say “wow, how nice”. However, the aggressive and thoughtless protests of those who do not want the slaughter of both animals and nature make people alienate both from environmentalism and from veganism.
Vegans can actually be beneficial when they raise awareness in more peaceful ways instead of taking offensive actions. Because veganism is based on the idea that living things should not be killed just because people want to. Whether or not to be vegan is everyone’s own choice. It is wrong to tell people not to consume animal food with such harsh actions.
Twitter reactions to activists throwing soup at the sunflowers painting and vegans spilling milk in the market confirm this idea. Here are some of those responses:
So what do you think about this subject? You can share your views with us in the comments.
- Image Sources: BBC, Grist, The Forbiz, The United Nations, Sky News, NBC News, The New Yorker, Sky News 2, Houston Chronicle, Grist
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