Environmental activism has moved from fishing nets to social networks, and of course, a paint pot is much better for that than a boat in the middle of the ocean.
A lot of people go every year around this time to welcome summer to the “Stonehenge”, the greatest standing wonder of prehistoric art/architecture. This encounter in that enigmatic and powerful place has occurred for hundreds, surely thousands of years. People came and go there, fascinated by the holistic conception of the universe as a whole, which in reality is surely one of the first proto-scientific expressions of the universe made by the hand of human beings.
The thing is that, among the millions of astronomers, druids, hippies, scientists, high priestesses and the occasional freaky, this year the monument has had the strident visit of two activists from the well-known organization “Just Stop Oil”, that which forms an army of well-off pre- and post-adolescents, whose main action is pour all kinds of substances on top of great works of art to demand that governments stop using fossil fuels.
Without a doubt, a very laudable goal. However, it seems strange to me that the purpose of paints, tomato sauce or glue are works of art and not, a put, big oil companies who are the main beneficiaries of the production and consumption of the fuels that this girl intends to put an end to.
I don't know, in my nineties pre-millennial mind, almost as old as Stonehenge themselves, there is still the memory of “Rainbow Warrior” by Greenpeace, and the environmental activists literally putting themselves at risk on board that small boat, when They stuck to large whaling ships and oil tankers on the high seas., whose bosses did not hesitate even for half a second to attack them, as if in Instead of environmental activists they were pirates Somalis about to approach them.
Now, sadly, in addition to the fact that the name of the ship would have to be mutilated and the “warrior” because it would be described as transphobia or any other stupidity, the Environmental activism has moved from fishing nets to social networks, and of course, for that, a can of paint, ecological I suppose, is much better than a boat in the middle of the ocean.
In addition, we must recognize that the photo on Instagram is much more in keeping with the character of the green revolutionaries of the 21st century than it is to bother an oil tanker, but the question is:Why don't they bother, even a little, the oil companies??
These very Instagrammable boys and girls have now gone to throw orange paint at the Stonehenge and a few months ago, also in the United Kingdom, They went to the National Gallery to throw tomato sauce at “The sunflowers” by Van Gohg. What do I say, since they were so close?, why didn't they go to the British Petroleum headquarters?, BP, which is right in London, throw tomatoes at the oil company's directors, instead of going to the museum to "violate" a painting.
Or when two of the members decided to sneak into the Prado Museum glued to the picture frames, they could have gone to pieces instead. put super glue or silicone on the Repsol headquarters, another large oil company whose corporate headquarters is also in Madrid, like El Prado.
Maybe it's that I'm very rude, or it's that feminist activism is less subtle than environmentalist activism, or maybe it's that there are those who worry that these very visual activists do not come even a little bit closer to who they are supposed to make visible, which is the great magnates of the oil industry.
Which leads me to the conclusion that I don't think an excursion to the Arab Emirates is on the agenda of this organization. to throw a pot of fabada at the petrodollar lords. They must think that it is much better to stick themselves zealously on the ticket offices of the Alhambra Now that a lot of people are going. Where is it going to stop…