Why jail won’t stop Just Stop Oil

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Just Stop Oil activists threw soup on Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers this afternoon – mere hours after two of their fellow eco-irritants were jailed for throwing precisely the same substance at precisely the same painting back in 2022. Phoebe Plummer has been sent down for two years, Anna Holland for 20 months. Clearly, prison is doing nothing to deter JSO’s crazed vandalism. Why? Because these deep-green activists are not merely worried about climate change – they are obsessed and deranged by their fear of climate change. They believe, as JSO luminary Roger Hallam does, that a warming planet spells the end of all civilization – a descent into a dystopia of drought, hellfire and anarchy. In short, they are gripped by an apocalyptic fantasy. A spell in jail feels like a luxury compared with the bleak future they imagine. We need to push back against this fact-free alarmism, or else more youngsters will be lost to this doomsday cult.

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