ON the occasions when activists from Just Stop Oil have targeted works of art or historical landmarks, there has been an outcry, both from horrified onlookers at the time and later in the press and the courtroom.

The British government is intent on cracking down on protest, even if it’s an action intent on trying to save us all from the ravages of runaway climate chaos.

“They are pathetic, they are self-defeating, and they need to feel the full force of the law,” pronounced Keir Starmer of Just Stop Oil activists in June. “That is what will happen if we have an incoming Labour government.”

The fact that these “antics,” as Starmer referred to them, had continued was “a failure to grip criminal justice,” he said. Now Starmer and his version of the Labour Party are in power, and climate protesters are being duly gripped, tried and sentenced.

Because in today’s world, climate activists are criminals. As one of Just Stop Oil’s self-described foot soldiers put it, “Slow-walking across Waterloo Bridge becomes an offence that goes to crown court.”

Throwing soup at glass-enclosed paintings by Van Gogh is just the most high-profile of the various direct actions being carried out to demand immediate and effective measures to drastically reduce carbon emissions.

A sensible government should have arrived at such a realisation on its own, thus obviating the need for Just Stop Oil not only to toss soup but to exist at all.

Instead, the Starmer government’s latest move is to squander £22 billion on one of the most useless (along with nuclear power) of all the supposedly “green” climate solutions — carbon capture and storage (CCS).

That’s because, as we have already pointed out on these pages, Starmer prefers to pander to the profit motives of the big fossil fuel companies who will benefit from CCS rather than make enemies of them.

The result of these policies is a fatal delay in meaningful action on the climate crisis, and this will harm more than paintings. While climate activists get labelled “vandals” and jailed, the real criminals are sitting in Whitehall. And it is actually they who are the greatest threat to art.

Starmer’s rudderless climate policies are sending the country in all the wrong directions. He needs a map, specifically the flood projection map of Britain produced by Climate Central.

On it, London’s National Gallery is located in Zone 3, an area with the highest probability of flooding. While it and its priceless art collection won’t necessarily be underwater by 2050, Tate Britain on the banks of the Thames almost certainly will be. So will Westminster.

Significantly, Climate Central includes a disclaimer: “This map may understate risk.”

As my Just Stop Oil contact said of the climate crisis, “This isn’t something you can wait for,” and yet there is no sense of urgency in Westminster. As he pointed out, the media absurdly described the recent violent weather as “the storms of the century” when they are nothing of the kind. This is our new normal.

Poor Van Gogh and his beautiful sunflowers and everything else will be swept away not because a few desperate people who could see it all coming threw soup at them. It will be because governments like Starmer’s chose CCS and nuclear power, squandering time we don’t have while stealing resources from the real climate solutions such as wind, solar and wave power along with energy efficiency measures.

It is the Starmer government that is slow-walking all the way to climate Armageddon, and no one is even giving them a ticket.

Linda Pentz Gunter is a writer based in Takoma Park, Maryland.