Animal and climate activists are joining forces! Global warming will continue to be a top issue until our actions are consistent with our words and needs. Roger Hallam, the co-founder of Extinction Rebellion, pointed out, “if we don’t work together, we are going to die together.”

Climate protestors are making drastic moves of rebellion as part of their acts to save animals and reinforce a “plant-based future.” 

Groups of protestors—vegan protestors especially, took part in ‘milk pour,’ where they took milk from shelves and emptied the bottles onto the floors of supermarkets and foodcourts at Waitrose, Whole Foods and Marks and Spencer in London, Manchester, Norwich and Edinburgh. 

These activists went out of their way for academics at Oxford, Harvard, and IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) to share their concerns about the environment and animal safety with higher authority.

The milk pouring act contradicts causes like Food Security.  Was the ‘milk pour’ appropriate, considering the imminent famine, food banks and people crashing into poverty, and babies being too weak to cry? 

“You’d get people on your side by donating plant-based meals to people in real need.” 

“If anything, this sets the vegan cause back years.”

One man said he understood the drastic action taken by the group. He said, “I think their point is that there’d be far fewer people without food if the land wasn’t all being used to provide food and dairy in the western world. The amount of land required for livestock is insane, causing deforestation and starvation.”

Perhaps they’ve done more harm than good, whether by extra pressure on the milk sources and the environment to make up for what was lost or by depriving their communities of food. 

And it all seemed to have started when protesters belonging to groups such as Just Stop Oil, Anti-Fossil Fuel, and Climate activists, among others, started gluing themselves to art pieces.

Though, this is not the first occurrence of these bold stunts by rebels, gluing themselves and smearing food on artwork to convey the climate crisis urgency. In 2019, the Extinction Rebellion brought London to a near-standstill. Activists occupied traffic hubs, glued themselves to buildings and trains and parked a boat in one of the city’s busiest intersections, merely interrupting people’s consumption and enjoyment of art, said Margaret Klein Salamon, the executive director of climate emergency Funds.

Some iconic pieces in museums and galleries were “vandalized”  as acts of protest. 

Pieces such as:

•  Van Gogh’s Sunflowers, doused in tomato soup at London’s National Gallery.
• A copy of The Last Supper at London’s Royal Academy of Arts, where activists glued their hands to the frame of the painting and spray painted “No New Oil” below it.
•  A Claude Monnet painting, Haystacks, served mashed potato inside a German museum–Museum Barberini, Postdam.

And other artworks by famous painters, including J.M.W. Turner, Pablo Picasso, and Horatio McCulloch, to warn against “a future of suffering.”

The activists claimed they intentionally endangered the pieces due to their knowledge of the present protective coverings.

 An activist group explained in an online statement why they chose a Futurist work, “we have to change direction. We glued ourselves to Boccioni’s work because we can no longer afford to keep building economic progress.”

Attention, unlike support, might have been easy to come by for these activist groups.

Are they going about this the right way?

Will their well-intentioned acts cause devastation? 

Citations:

https://www.macleans.ca/opinion/animal-and-climate-activists-are-merging-and-for-good-reason/amp/
https://www.republicworld.com/amp/world-news/uk-news/after-soup-on-van-gogh-painting-climate-protest…
https://www.forbes.com/sites/rebeccahughes/2022/08/05/why-are-climate-activists-gluing-themselves-to…
https://www.londonworld.com/read-this/animal-rebellion-activists-slammed-over-milk-pour-protests-in-…
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-10-15/animal-rebellion-protesters-pour-milk-in-shops-ac…
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/clarissajanlim/climate-activists-paintings-glue-protest