Van Gogh, Climate, Tomato Soup, Despair, Stupidity And Hope: Protest Stunts Reflect Nihilism And Backlash Risk

Climate activists threw tomato soup on a Van Gogh 
painting in a London gallery on Friday. Attention-
getting, yes, but probably not so effective messaging. 

 Among the many weird headlines on various news sites on Friday was the breaking news that some climate activists went into the National Gallery In London, uncorked two cans of Heinz tomato soup and threw the soup onto Van Gogh's painting "Sunflowers."

Then the two activists glued their hands to the wall. 

Yes, this is incredibly stupid in any scenario, and like probably everyone else, I'm at a loss as to how this will blunt the dangerous effects of climate change. 

As the Washington Post reports:

"'What is worth more, art or life?' one of the protesters shouted, her hand glued to the wall behind her. '..... Are you more concerned about the protection of a painting or the protection of our planet?'"

I'm being Captain Obvious here, but t's unclear how trying to destroy a work of art will save any lives that could be claimed by climate change. 

Don't get me wrong. It IS  appropriate for climate activists to make the fossil fuel industry and the politicians who support these industries uncomfortable. However, to be too literal, I don't think it's Van Gogh's fault that we are facing a climate crisis. 

The good news is "Sunflowers" was protected by glass, so it was unharmed, though the frame suffered light damage from the acidity in the tomato soup.  Six hours after the incident, "Sunflowers" was back on display in the National Gallery.

The Washington Post's report notes that the "Sunflower" attack was one of a series of climate protests that have targeted famous art.  I don't know why. 

If you want to do something about climate change, you need allies. You want to convince people the cause is important, that everyone should participate in efforts to wean ourselves away from fossil fuel.

The art attacks and other strange climate activist stunts, has the opposite effect of alienating potential allies. 

It's true these wacko climate moments do garner plenty of attention. Various video of the Great Van Gogh Tomato Soup Incident of '22 has garnered tens of millions of views on social media.

But how many people who watched the video became more sympathetic to the cause?  My guess is very few. In fact, I bet they had quite the opposite effect. People who might have been persuaded that climate activism might actually help the planet now might  incorrectly dismiss most climate change activists as kooks and attention seekers. 

There's research to back this up.  Michael Mann, a leading climate scientist, cited research from Stamford suggesting that bad or extreme messaging backfires. In the study's abstract, the researchers wrote:

"....we find across three experiments that extreme protest tactics decreased popular support for a given cause because they reduced feelings of identification with the movement."

This isn't at all to say that climate activism among youth is bad.  Most of the time, it's extremely helpful as many young people are creative, super smart and bring a lot of energy in the fight for climate change reform. 

Mann tweeted: "I love the passion of the youth climate movement - it has been a game changer, precisely because it has WON hearts and minds. Let's not forget that."

I completely agree with him. 

I'm not sure if Friday's tomato soup group was just looking for social media clicks, or they succumbed to despair.  I suspect the later, judging from public statements from the soup kids and their supporters. 

I thought Terri Mitchell's @Storm4Nosey defense of the pair was pretty representative. "There will be no art on a dead planet. Climate change will not just destroy the natural world, but everything that humans have ever created. No beauty, no culture, no past, no future no life. Nothing..... There won't be any beauty in the world if we allow the climate to be destroyed."

My response was, "So the solution is to try to preemptively destroy beauty before climate change does it?"

I worry about Mitchell's nihilism and that of the soup group. And that of the other despairing activists. The climate crisis is obviously an enormous foe, and everything needs to be done to stop it.  But this apparent need to try and destroy things before climate change gets a chance seems counterproductive. Why try to blunt climate change when all is already lost?

Climate scientist Peter Kalmus had a more nuanced, but still supportive take on the soup group, In a Twitter thread, he notes that the anger over the vandalism to the Van Gogh painting, which really caused no damage, is misplaced. In part, Kalmus writes:

"How tragic, that there is LITERALLY more outrage over this act that caused zero damage, than about fossil fuel executives lying, colluding, and blocking action for decades, locking in intensifying heat waves, flooding, fires, rising seas, collapsing crop yields and death? 

Kalmus continued: "These activists and their bold act of desperation shattered the collective sleepwalk, if for a moment. It stirred things up. It caused discussion. It shone a light."

I still worry that it might have caused the wrong discussion.  The climate crisis is so big that we need as many of us as possible to participate in a solution. Trying to damage a painting, sitting down and blocking roads (thereby making cars sit and idle, spewing more CO2 into the atmosphere) and other stunts turn too many people off. 

Why not turn our attention toward the fossil fuel executives that Kalmus refers to. And the politicians that aid and abet them.  And others would would deny the dangers of climate change, all for fun and especially profit?

Van Gogh had nothing to do with the climate change. I know it is hard for younger people especially to not succumb to nihilism and despair over the climate crisis?  But what choice do we have. Give up and throw soup cans, or do the real work of changing the world before it's too late.

I know many people, especially those younger than me are doing just that. Changing the world to save it. Let's join them instead of denying and destroying the beauty of the world that still exists.  

Kentucky Flash Flood Weighs On Me More Than Most Other Climate Disasters

Like most Americans, I'm in shock and in mourning over this past week's mega flash flood in Kentucky. 

In a photo posted on Twitter by @ShawnRichards,
a 98-woman is trapped in her flooded 
Kentucky home. She was later rescued
and is now reported to be safe.

At last report, the confirmed death toll is at 26, including four children.  More are missing and the death toll will rise.  These stats are awful, but don't haunt me as much as the photos from the flood zone. 

There was one pic on social media showing a 98 year old woman trying to balance on a chair floating in three feet of water inside her Kentucky home. (She was later rescued and was reported to be safe). 

Or a road that once had a row of house. The houses are gone now, leaving behind a couple concrete slabs.  What happened to the people in those houses?

The flash flood hit in the middle of the night. Eight inches of rain poured down on steep terrain already waterlogged by repeated rounds of thunderstorms in the past month. This was the second 1 in 1,000 year flood to hit a part of the United States within a week. (St. Louis was hit a couple days earlier).

The timing of this cataclysmic flood could not have been worse. It was the middle of the night. Maybe the sound of the initial downpours roaring on the roofs that evening lulled people into a relaxing sleep. They certainly weren't ready to hear the flash flood warnings. Plus, the water came so fast, who could react in time?

Walls of water and mud poured off the slopes in the darkness. Victims awoke to the sound of rushing water and debris flowing into their homes, or making their homes float away while they were inside. It had to be beyond terrifying. You couldn't see in the darkness, you couldn't find your loved ones as the cold water and debris battered their houses, and their bodies. 

That hundreds of people have been rescued is in itself a miracle. And a testament to the bravery of Kentuckians who went out on this rescue missions.

The Kentucky disaster affected me more than most of the other stream of climate related disasters we've had this year, and in the past few. Yes, this one was probably climate driven. Heavy rain storms are now heavier under a climate change regime. What might have been a problematic flash flood a few decades ago was catastrophic now. 

First of all, it's not like Kentucky needed another storm crisis. 

As the New York Times reports in this run on sentence: 

"'I wish I could tell you why we keep getting hit here in Kentucky,' Gov Andy Beshear said during a briefing in which he updated residents on the rising death toll and displayed a sense of anguish and exhaustion that many in the state have felt after recurring disasters, including a powerful ice storm last year that cut off power to 150,000 people in eastern Kentucky, a flash flood last July that left many stranded in their homes and a rare December tornado that carved a nearly 200-mile path of destruction that killed 80 people."

The other disasters, and this week's flood in particular, hit people that have even fewer resources to deal with kind of thing that most people. 

An irony of the Kentucky flood is it hit coal country. But the coal industry is now greatly diminished, as the world works toward finding other sources of energy other than things like coal, which contribute greatly to climate change. 

This declining coal industry left Appalachia, including the flood zone, even more impoverished than it was before. Which means the people suffering most from this disaster the fewest means to recover from it 

And no, before you leap to conclusions, I'm not blaming the former coal miners and their families for the flash flood that just ruined their lives. They are innocent in this whole thing.

This terrible flood hit kind of close to home for me, too. I grew up in Vermont, which at first glance cannot seem more different than the hollows of eastern Kentucky. 

You can see in the news footage that this flood did not hit the kind of quaint, prosperous and pretty villages Vermont is famous for. The disaster zone was pretty gritty even before the first drops of rain fell last week. 

But there really are a lot of similarities between Vermont and eastern Kentucky. I grew up in West Rutland, Vermont. Don't get me wrong, West Rutland is a wonderful small town. But it's not touristy Woodstock or Stowe. It's decidedly working class. People in West Rutland don't have million dollar bank accounts handy to recover from setbacks. 

And it's surrounded by steep mountains. There's also a lot of winding back, gravel roads and blacktop rural lanes that wind up and down these hills. Modest houses, many more than you'd think, are hidden in these woods. I just pictured the same storm that hit Kentucky roaring through West Rutland and environs. And shuddered. 

Most other areas of Vermont, away from the tourist destinations, are very much like West Rutland.

We're certainly not immune from these terrible flash floods. Vermont has essentially the same terrain as eastern Kentucky. It's easy for heavy rains to prompt terrible flash floods and we certainly have a history of those. November, 1927. September, 1938. June, 1973. August, 1995. July, 1997. June, 1998. the spring floods of 2011. Tropical Storm Irene, August, 2011.

Those floods all caused tremendous damage in Vermont, and some of them resulted in deaths. There's videos on YouTube of serious Irene flooding in West Rutland. 

But climate change ups the ante. It could even possibly be much worse than that video taken from a truck splashing through 2011 West Rutland flood waters. The Kentucky flood was "impossible" until it happened. Other impossible extremes are also happening. Will the impossible happen in Vermont? I really don't know. 

My mother died in May, and now the West Rutland house where she lived and where I grew up in is up for sale. A nice young couple is interested in buying it. The house isn't near any creeks or streams. It's on a hill, not a flood plain. I don't recall it ever suffering any kind of flood damage. 

But the stakes are now higher. If this couple buys the house, I don't think they'll ever have to deal with flooding. If they buy, I hope the enjoy the place for many, many years.

But suddenly, I no longer am that sure that house will survive a climate disaster. Or my house in St. Albans, Vermont. Or anybody else's house for that matter.

It's not that I stay up all night worrying about it. But that thought is in the back of my head. And if we're honest, it's in the back of many people's heads. It probably was for some of the flood victims in Kentucky, and then the nightmare became a reality. 

The chances of an "impossible" weather calamity hitting any individual is low. But unlike in past decades, the impossible is now possible. As Kentucky and St. Louis demonstrated last week.