March 28, 2025 - 7:00am
It’s over. Just Stop Oil is “hanging up the hi-vis” and will cease its campaign of direct action by the end of April. But after three years of throwing orange paint at things, why is the group throwing in the towel now?
Of course, it doesn’t help that the vanguard of JSO activists — including the organisation’s leader, Roger Hallam — are currently in prison. The plan was that their high-profile stunts would inspire enough acts of civil disobedience to gum up the court system and challenge the authorities, but the hoped-for scale of resistance never materialised.
Nevertheless, JSO is claiming victory. The group says its “initial demand” to stop the extraction of new oil and gas is now Government policy. But is it? Shortly before her Spring Statement this week, Rachel Reeves confirmed that consent for two new oil and gas fields — Rosebank and Jackdaw — would be going ahead despite some legal wrangling. It’s true that the Government does have a policy not to license further exploration in the North Sea, but arguably the credit — or blame — for that belongs to green energy entrepreneur Dale Vince. He used to fund JSO, but his donations to the Labour Party may have proved more decisive.
Whatever the case, one has to question the JSO claim that the Government’s no-exploration policy will keep “4.4 billion barrels of oil in the ground”. The UK is currently using oil at a rate of close to half a billion barrels of oil every year. If that’s not produced domestically, then it has to come out of the ground somewhere on the planet. Even if JSO has been instrumental in shutting down the North Sea, the impact on the UK’s contribution to climate change will be negligible.
The irony is that almost all of the UK’s economically recoverable oil has already been extracted. Like a child trying to get the last drops out of a milkshake, we’re just making sucking noises with the straw now. Whether we call an immediate halt or not will make little difference to our public finances — and none at all to oil prices, which are determined globally.
To add to the absurdity of it all, the Government’s policy will make no difference to achieving the Net Zero target, which is a pledge to cut the consumption of fossil fuels, not their production. Indeed, the only sure way to stop oil is to end the demand for it, but if the Labour Government is serious about that then it shouldn’t be promoting policies such as the expansion of Heathrow and Gatwick airports.
If Just Stop Oil has failed in its objectives, the same goes for Extinction Rebellion (XR), a similar UK-based campaign. XR’s main demand was to achieve Net Zero by 2025, which obviously won’t be happening. And yet it would be wrong to suggest that the climate protesters have made no difference. Seven years ago, when XR began its campaign, there was a broad political consensus on climate policy. The main political parties were united around Net Zero — and a Conservative government was leading the UK toward the biggest emission cuts of any major economy.
Today, that consensus is shattered and the Tory leader claims that achieving Net Zero by 2050 is “impossible”. The green activists aren’t wholly — or even mainly — to blame for this sorry state of affairs, but their antics divided the country at the worst possible time.
Peter Franklin is Associate Editor of UnHerd. He was previously a policy advisor and speechwriter on environmental and social issues.
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SubscribeI once read as comment (probably in the Guardian, actually) from someone who said “I have always assumed that Just Stop Oil were funded by Big Oil and the Tory Party, because the only thing they’ve achieved is to get the public to hate the Green Left”. I think that sums it up.
Although I hated the Green Left already
That was probably me. Before I was banned.
Funded by Big Oil quite possibly, I wondered that, but their inclusion of “the Tory Party” is a bit of guardianista daftness.
I would say JSO have managed to antagonise the British public against almost anything to do with ‘ecology’ at all, never mind “the Green Left”, which could be a disaster.
Stupid activism is worse than none at all. Why anyone thinks that being a public nuisance will inspire others to sympathize with their cause is beyond me. This comes across to me as adult children having temper tantrums when they don’t get their way, and I pay as little attention as possible to either. I don’t believe in rewarding bad behavior with attention.
Funded by the CCP was my assumption. Brainwash the young and turn people against each other.
The greens are a bunch of sanctimonious privileged idiots who don’t give a toss about increased fuel bills for the poor.
We have the best of intentions, therefore whatever we do is good!
Possibly these groups have realised that if they want to meaningfully reduce human carbon emissions – whether or not that makes any real difference to the direction of travel of our climate – they would need to head off to China and start p***ing off their government. These individuals lack the slightest level of commitment to do that.
I very much doubt that. They seem as disconnected from practical reality as ever based on this ludicrous claim.
I suspect that having a cause to fight for is more important than the actual cause or whether it’s actually achieved for some (though not all) of these people. I can remember wanting to have a cause to struggle for when I was young. Perhaps fortunately, I never found one.
I think you hit the nail on the head, it’s a shame that all available “causes” seem to be illiberal and middle-class leftist.
There was an incident in the Seattle area years ago where a bunch of activists organized to block traffic in and out of a Boeing plant. It was late winter and the weather turned out bad, so rather than get up and out activating their ring around the plant with 7am incoming traffic, the shifted to the end of the day and blocked the workers from leaving work at the end of the day. Talk about morons… They might have enjoyed some sympathy preventing people from going to work. But keeping them there unpaid after hours made them hated. But it was more convenient.
“Even if JSO has been instrumental in shutting down the North Sea, the impact on the UK’s contribution to climate change will be negligible.”
An important point.
You can say the same about pretty much anything we do in the UK, besides fusion research.
From the article on Rolls Royce, a big thing the UK can do is develop an industry based around building small modular nuclear reactors. The world is crying out for better and cleaner sources of energy. Start by mass production for the UK to get the UK’s energy costs down, which would then enable crucial basic industries like stainless steel and steel to be price competitive to feed the supply chain.
It does not seem that Milliband is a big fan of nuclear. The UK needs someone more open minded in charge of energy not one with a windmill fetish.
He’s not a big fan of nuclear because he can’t leverage it to enrichen his family.
he is a very silly and stupid little man
Don Quixote had the right idea about windmills .
The world is “crying out” for cheaper energy, full stop. “Cleaner” is the preoccupation of a minority, not only in the Western world, but globally. Having said that, I’m 100% behind the SMN reactors idea!
Their influence on the massive job losses and project cancellations in northeast Scotland is not negligible. It’s devastating. May they rot in hell.
The breakdown of the cosy political consensus around Net Zero is to be celebrated not seen as a sorry state of affairs. Net Zero is a highly destructive and delusional policy which has done and continues to do great harm to the U.K. economy – which as a result is alone amongst developed nations in suffering a material decline in its total energy supply over recent decades. See IEA statistics on TES freely available on its website. .
“the hoped-for scale of resistance never materialised.”
You mean the overprotected children of affluent urban professionals can’t form a coherent and effective political movement. You mean there aren’t enough right minded progressives willing to live in mud huts and eat bugs for the sake of the planet to accomplish anything. I’m shocked, just shocked, at these revelations.
I think they intended the mud huts and bugs for the rest of us while they carry in skiing.
They aren’t going to live in mud huts and eat bugs. Just you peasants will.
Nothing.
Other than to provide a means for misguided children (Adult or otherwise) to obtain a moment of unearned attention.
it’s amazing as groups like JSO, XR are whiter than the KKK, it’s weird they don’t seem to be very ‘diverse’
They’re about as diverse as the Glastonbury audience. In fact they are a sub group of such.
Children of White, Liberal, Upper Middle class folk who live in rich overspill villages and towns because their parents could afford to leave the conurbations 30 or 40 years ago which were becoming increasingly brown.
like with Trans Activisim, DEI Activists, they have just annoyed people , and made increased support for those in opposition to them
All cheeks of the same arse
Is there not a teeny, tiny little bit of change of heart creeping in with regard to this whole AGW thing in scientific circles? I’m just a layman, but I am getting a gut sense that this is so. Recent conference declarations and published papers are starting to challenge the “BBC” version of truth. Just one example: https://scienceofclimatechange.org/wp-content/uploads/SCC-Grok-3-Review-V5-1.pdf
The primary objective of science in academia is the obtain the next grant. Non-conformists don’t get grants.
I get the sense too that realism is creeping in a little more as the deadlines set by those who said we would be subject to an apocalypse have found their deadlines have passed and we are all still here. Extinction Rebellion come to mind, they said we had a deadline of 2025, and here we are, the sky hasn’t fallen in after all.
Nothing, but its activists are older now and no doubt want to settle down, marry, live in the countryside and travel by car.
It never ceased to amaze me that, in this day and age when data is so important, how much flawed analysis is used to claim victory for whichever axe pressure groups are grinding at present
To add to the absurdity of it all, the Government’s policy will make no difference to achieving the Net Zero target, which is a pledge to cut the consumption of fossil fuels, not their production. Indeed, the only sure way to stop oil is to end the demand for it, but if the Labour Government is serious about that then it shouldn’t be promoting policies such as the expansion of Heathrow and Gatwick airports.
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Not only. The government should reduce the population of Britain several times. Pol Pot can act as a consultant.
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Nevertheless, JSO is claiming victory. The group says its “initial demand” to stop the extraction of new oil and gas is now Government policy.
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The Houthis also sank one American aircraft carrier and several escort ships.
Which Aircraft Carrier? Which Escort Ships? Names and dates please…
Sorry, bro! Unfortunately, there is no sign “sarcasm” in Internet
The UK government should enact laws to make domestic terrorism a serious crime with substantial penalties. Organisations like Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion are examples of examples of domestic terrorism. Animal Liberation is another. Such groups employ terror tactics, but get away with no consequences or relatively light sentences under legislation that is weak and ineffective. The majority needs to be protected against domestic terror as much as it does against currently terrorism as recognised in existing law.
No, no, you are missing the point. Just Stop Oil has achieved a Glorious Victory, second only to the defeat of fascism and Nazism in WWII. We will celebrate the Glorious Victory forever! (Now go home, activists, please).
And the same for the Planetary Heroes of Extinction Rebellion. Yes, you devoted activists achieved a Victory that Echoed Around the World!
Now let’s get back to frack, baby frack. Surely, there must be nobodies on the fracking front similiar to the nobodies that gave us machine textiles and steam engines a couple of centuries ago.
To young people, who have no jobs and think that delaying fat cats is making a good point – they have done very well. Which is why we have today this huge difference in viewpoint between the young and the old. The young might have no money but they do have a viewpoint – one which is going to win as the old people get older.
Well if that viewpoint – and that lack of empathy with regard to the impact on ordinary people of all that disruption – wins out, the young will have a great deal less money than they have now. “…And worse [we] may be yet: the worst is not so long as we can say, ‘This is the worst’”.
You see it everywhere. Young people have stories which don’t seem real to us. My grand-daughter proudly tells of her friend who chose to change from lesbian, then to Goth, then to hetero to reel in a husband with money, then divorce and back to lesbian again. This story only affects a few people but multiply it by a huge number of the young and you get a lack of interest in doing things for the community – an inward looking view which, I believe, is part of the generation.
A number of JSO and XR activists are quite old!
It’s not just a failure of the young, it’s a national failure to demand from politicians and institutions to plan for energy security and other forms of security (food, border you name it)
It’s a whole society that lives for the moment!
Don’t be so sure. When young people become older, what they become is older people with opinions based on intellectual maturity. Not old people with young persons’ views.
Quite true. When my daughter was at university (a little over 6 years ago so not exactly the dim and distant past) pretty much all of her friends were pro XR, Corbanyte left wing, hyper woke, activists.
The vast majority of them now are pro fracking (until we get SMRs built), think Net Zero is scam, are sick of DEI, and support Reform.
Just shows that it doesn’t take long when they have to experience the real world for them to drop the insanity.
Similar experience of current attitudes amongst my young employees, none of them watch broadcast tv, all of them are hardworking, all distainful of fashionable opinions.
These are not young people who have no money. They are almost exclusively from upper middle class backgrounds and educated to be unemployable.
White upper middle class. Is there a less diverse group in Britain? Maybe the leadership of the Labour Party.
Well, ask yourself: is there anyone in a position of executive power in the Civil Service, either political party or the media who didn’t go to Oxford with 2tk or Blair?
all doing it off the backs off Daddy’s money and screaming about the patriarchy
Guess what? Young people are getting older as well. And when a dose of reality finally hits them they will see that older people may have a point.
It’s one of the absurdities of being young that you think you will be young forever, and that your opinions will never change.