Just Do Better.

This week, I left Just Stop Oil.

Since April this year, I have given months of my life, multiple arrests, my mind, my voice, my heart and my energy to Just Stop Oil. It’s cost me a relationship, the respect of some friends, and caused many arguments with my family. The arrests mean I’ll likely struggle to work in the education sector, and limit my general career prospects. More than that, working for Just Stop Oil has come at the cost of my mental health. I’ve noticed myself reading less, sleeping badly, spending most of my days angry, in despair, and have developed bad habits of toxic resentment that will take a long time to work beyond.

My issues with Just Stop Oil started right at the first talk I went to, given by two people I’ve got deep love and respect for and have been on arrestable actions with since. Their messaging was about “the truth”, and about how high-profile “sacrifice” is needed to stop oil before we reach a “tipping point”. This initial talk exhibited all the problems more intersectional groups have been criticising Just Stop Oil for since its inception: guilt-tripping and scaring people into committing to “sacrifice” themselves for a hierarchical organisation that acts, in the words of Roger Hallam, according to “the objective moral position”: you wouldn’t want to be on the wrong side of history, would you? you’re complicit in a genocidal system, you know. you wouldn’t want to let a silly little thing like arrest deter you from resisting genocide…

It shouldn’t have to be said, but it seems I have to say it: there is no “objective moral position”. On anything. And if there is, it’s certainly not been stumbled upon by one white man in the UK who’s made public comments downplaying the importance of the Holocaust. The same goes for telling “the truth”, which was one of Extinction Rebellion’s initial key demands. The climate crisis arrives at the intersection of biological, social, economic, and ecological crises - all of which are complex, and countless millions of voices have unique and vital contributions to make in these fields. Selecting specific (largely white, Global North) climate scientists and claiming these as the sole sources of “the truth” of the climate crisis is anything but “objective”. This is an objection I raised with the speakers at the time, but since joining the group, I’ve suppressed my own objections, and given the same talk with the same problems.

There are countless thousands of different scientists with their own studies and framings of the climate crisis - but in the activist spaces of Just Stop Oil, one quote from one man pops up pretty much everywhere - Sir David King’s quote that “what we do in the next three to four years, I believe, will determine the future of humanity”. It’s a powerful quote to say in a talk, because there’s always the follow-up: he said that last year. We have two to three years “left”.

Left to what, exactly? Because as Hallam himself has said, “determine the future of humanity” is pretty vague wording. We say that quote as if it means we’ve got two to three years left to live. It’s a part of the urgency culture Just Stop Oil is built on - all our main messaging is rooted in the idea that these are critical years, in which we should work non-stop, burnout be damned, to stop fossil fuels. It doesn't matter if we lose friends, lose hope, lose ourselves, lose our ability to pursue our dream job - either we stop fossil fuels now and get lauded as heroes forever, making history, or we burn out in a glorious and sacrificial attempt.

All this leads to is people flyering for days on end without breaks, feeling overwhelming guilt for taking even five minutes off, and a general apathy towards anything that isn't directly related to stopping oil. I have experienced all of the above for a long time. I've found myself shrinking, from someone equally passionate about literature, music and people, as about climate activism and politics, into someone with what I've come to call a "single-issue personality". I became the Just Stop Oil guy.

Not only is this a disservice to myself, it's also a disservice to the complexity of the climate crisis.

We don’t just need to stop oil. We need to overcome colonialism, neoliberalism, patriarchal and cisnormative oppression, speciesism, and - deep breath - capitalism. We need to stop the shift from a bottom-up, diverse agroecological food system to the oppressive, poisonous monocultures of the Western Green Revolution. We need to stop the private prison system, and for that we need to stop romanticising arrest. We need to stop economic models that value profit above people, and to do that we need to value people over political projects (to build communities, not numbers of “arrestables” on spreadsheets). 

We do need to stop oil. We don’t “just” need to do that, but it does need to be done, because as Vanessa Nakate has said, the people of the Global South “cannot adapt” to droughts, famines or floods caused by the climate crisis. We need campaigns dedicated to stopping the world’s greatest-emitting industry because climate justice is impossible if fossil fuels continue. It’s just that the flipside is also true - if justice isn’t central to everything we do, we won’t stop fossil fuels.

I’m not speaking from a moral high ground here - at various points while I’ve been in Just Stop Oil, I’ve made sweeping statements like “we’re going to run out of food in ten years” without any scientific research; I’ve deliberately attempted to make close friends of mine feel guilty for not doing arrestable activism; I’ve said really ignorant stuff about arrest; I’ve been more dismissive, bad-tempered and uncritical than at any other time in my life.

If anyone reads this and thinks “ah, just what I suspected! The environmental movement is bad, it’s just a bunch of white middle-class people sitting in roads. No need to engage in activism; I’ll stay home,” you’ve taken the wrong message. The Secretary-General of the UN said just last week that inaction on the climate crisis is tantamount to a “collective suicide pact”. Glacial floodwater wiped 33 million people from their homes in Pakistan this year. Millions around the Global South will die, and the climate crisis will make refugees of billions more, if we do nothing.

What I’m asking is that we do better. Those friends of mine in Just Stop Oil reading this, I hope it comes across that I write out of love, and from a deep solidarity for what you have been through for this movement. I know people are in Just Stop Oil working for positive change on every single one of the issues raised here - just last night, the Speaker team hosted their first national zoom talk platforming LGBTQIA+ speakers. Things are changing.

The climate crisis is urgent. Every fraction of a degree we heat our planet means hundreds, thousands, or millions of people with floodwater through their houses, means political turmoil, economic devastation, societal unrest. Hallam is right - we haven’t got time to waste.

He’s just not right about how we’re wasting it. These are crucial years, yes - which means we can’t afford to keep dragging our feet on doing vital anti-oppression work on the climate movement. We can’t waste any more time trapped in the mindset of the system that got us into this mess in the first place. Actions are more effective when they hit multiple intersections of oppression, and right now, we need our actions to be as effective as possible. We can’t waste time by attacking other dedicated groups like Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, accusing them of complicity in the climate crisis because they don’t get arrested - we need to use our time as effectively as possible, by building bridges between all sections of the environmental movement, and learning from one another, while calling out problematic tactics when we see them.

Just Stop Oil has massive strengths - it’s been incredibly effective at shifting public debate, at making climate activism front-page global news, and I’m proud of the part I’ve played in that, and the friends I’ve met along the way, who I’ve supported and who’ve supported me, as we sound the alarm bell on this existential crisis. I’ve had conversations with so many people who have been woken from apathy about the climate crisis because they saw one of our roadblocks, or were inspired (or outraged!) by the phenomenal Van Gogh Sunflowers action; and I’ve been there to see so many people grow from apathy to anger to action as a result of Just Stop Oil talks. 

Nobody in recent UK politics has achieved such a disciplined, well-organised entire month of civil disobedience, particularly not one that’s continued to escalate in scale, and featured such a range of targets. Nobody is grabbing headlines, or deliberately pissing off the Home Secretary, as much as Just Stop Oil. The Van Gogh action was a stunning cultural moment that will be remembered for a long time to come, and I’m proud to know the people behind the headlines. Other groups do genuinely have a lot to learn from JSO, and since day one, JSO was pioneering climate activist stunts that inspired replica actions worldwide. As a small personal example, I have had direct word from an activist in Uganda that JSO is being looked to as a source of hope and inspiration there too.

JSO’s combined efforts could genuinely push the UK government to a crisis point, and its key demands, if implemented, will lead to a more just and less chaotic society. I’m grateful for the central demand of a just transition; JSO’s demand for insulation and for national free public transport intersect with both environmental and social class issues. The coalitions it’s been able to form - with Don’t Pay UK, the Peace and Justice Project, and its talks with trade unions - are all moving JSO in the right direction.

It ain’t all bad.

But we need to remember that Just Stop Oil hasn’t yet stopped oil. Another campaign - one whose main tactics are zoom-bombs, tweet storms, marches and, yes, petitions - has stopped oil. Stop Cambo were credited by Shell in an internal document as being the primary reason they pulled out of the Cambo oil field. JSO hasn't got time to waste ignoring and dismissing such genuine success stories.

I’m not saying everyone should leave Just Stop Oil and join Stop Rosebank. The JSO campaign still has the potential to redeem itself. It’s not even a year old. But the first step is to acknowledge that no single campaign has a perfect approach - nobody knows the “right” method to create social change. The best we can do is stay humble, and learn from as many other sources as possible.

In a lot of the JSO talks, speakers ask the audience "don't you want to be on the right side of history?" - I want to turn that question back on JSO itself. The arc of history is bending towards justice, whether you admit it or not. Things are flowing ever-faster towards intersectional, diverse, vibrant movements that offer love and community in the face of capitalism's inhuman cruelty. That's where history is going. Which side are you on?

My (subjective!) suggestions for making Just Stop Oil a more intersectional movement:

1. Kick out Roger Hallam. XR did it, and they’re now making leaps and bounds in terms of their diversity, and have massively shifted their messaging towards more systemic analyses of the root causes of the climate crisis. I wouldn’t for a second claim the problems reside entirely with him - but nobody else is quite as committed to the ‘people-as-arrestable-numbers’ view as him, anywhere in the movement.

2. Regular anti-oppression workshops for all activists in the movement, particularly for Speakers, who should also work towards a greater awareness of just how different experiences of the policing and criminal justice system are for different people. No more speakers entering other people’s organising spaces and forcing conversations to focus almost exclusively on arrest!

3. Organisational humility - this one’s more general, but it could play out in specific ways - Just Stop Oil needs to acknowledge that it doesn’t have all the answers and draws from a very specific interpretation of the climate crisis and of the history of activism. When interacting with other movements, instead of coming from a place of saviourism, instead of teaching “what works” to groups who’ve been around for considerably longer than JSO, the first gesture should be one of solidarity: not “here’s what you’re doing wrong”, but “how can we help one another?”

I encourage, and welcome, your responses to this article. These are merely the thoughts of one person with one perspective - they by no means accurately represent the entirety of Just Stop Oil (they are barely a summary of my own thoughts). I’m practising what I preach here - intellectual humility: I could be completely wrong on a lot of this stuff, and I am nowhere near attaining a proper formula for how activism “should be”.

There’s no guidebook, no “right” way, no easy answers.

All we can do is learn, and try to just do better.