On the Iconoclasm of Today's Climate Action.
Tackling manmade climate change generates a classic collective action problem, where the distant benefits and gains from the sacrifice of enjoyment in the (near) present are themselves opaquely and unequally distributed in a dispersed future. Even the relatively modest attempts to tackle elements of it generate relatively huge headaches for the political classes because everyone feels that another group ought to be first in line to sacrifice. So, I don’t mean to make light of the tactical and strategical challenges facing climate activists.
But I think it’s fair to say that despite the purported overwhelming support among citizens everywhere for “climate action,” such action is not being entrenched in concrete policy in the world’s liberal democracies (and non-democracies). Or, in so far as it is being entrenched, then not fast enough to prevent very bad things from happening.
So much for set up.
This past weekend the Dutch contingent of Extinction Rebellion (ER) managed to close down the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. According to their website, their demand is that the Rijksmuseum cut ties with its sponsor the Dutch multinational bank ING Group:
Lurking behind ER’s stance is the sense that the Rijksmuseum is indirectly participating in ING’s greenwashing. And according to ER ING is complicit in, if not partially responsible for other people’s harms. Let’s stipulate this is all true.
In fairness to the activists, unlike museums in Anglo-Saxon countries, the Rijksmuseum is not existentially dependent on donations from private companies. It can afford to be somewhat picky who it accepts money from. But it can’t afford to be too picky either, especially because right wing Dutch governments are retrenching from art subsidies more generally.
As an aside, Amsterdam has just gone through one of its periodic phases of incredible wealth generation—and part of this new wealth is centered on being a non-trivial node in all kinds of financial networks. So, turning one’s back on the financial industry also entails non-trivial opportunity costs.
During that prosperous period, the Rijksmuseum itself was closed for nearly a decade (between 2003-2013) due to a disastrously managed refurbishing (and various quality of life protestors). So, all of us in the city who love The Rijks, lost something we never got back during that period.
Now, if you look at the picture of the activists’ banner during the Rijksmuseum protests, it also clearly states ‘no art on a dead planet.’ Initially, as I looked at the picture, I thought we had to paraphrase this charitably as ‘nobody has a right to enjoy art as the planet is dying’ or, more likely, ‘while you are enjoying art, the planet is dying off.’
The problem with that interpretation of the slogan is, however, that art is self-justifying, or a proper end, and, perhaps, precisely as the planet is dying off art is all the more necessary. To avoid misunderstanding, I am not agreeing with those effective altruists who think saving a Picasso is more important than a child in a burning house because you may be able to use the money from selling a Picasso to use the proceeds to save many more children. (With apologies to Doing Good Better for simplifying.) If I were asked, I would say one ought to save the child in the burning house. But rather that it’s also okay to value a Terniers amidst unfolding catastrophes.
But ER actually seems to believe that the climate crisis is (translating from the press release) “disastrous for a habitable earth, and thus for the continued existence of the museum's collection.” Amsterdam is about two meters below sea level, and clearly as sea-levels rise (with climate change) the risks for the collection will increase. There are predictions that by 2150 sea-levels will have risen by 5 meters.
That’s not great. (I live in Amsterdam.) But that need not endanger all of humanity or the collection (which can be moved to higher parts of the Netherlands). So, lurking here is a kind of apocalyptic commitment that far exceeds the best science of the day. Some climate activists involved in this vandalism present themselves as the Last Generation. (Often they protest the conspicuous consumption of the rich and wealthy.) But the Dutch government is pretty confident that it can adapt to climate change at least until the end of the century. (So, the activists won’t be the last generation.)
If the closing down of the Rijksmuseum were an isolated occurrence, one can shrug one’s shoulders. But since 2022 vandalizing art and museums has become normalized in the environmental movement in Europe (for a useful overview of which groups are involved and data about incidence see here).
Of course, the vandalism serves a messaging purpose using the tools of modern media logic. As the researchers note in Nature, “If museums are an important part of a country’s cultural life, museum vandalism will probably receive extensive media coverage.” And I have long thought that the idea behind it is to reach the cosmopolitan chattering classes and opinion-makers to get them to put extra pressure on politicians. Since the line dividing modern art and performance-protest is often invisible (and we have already encountered art that self-destructs), there is nothing especially notable about the vandalism as performance art.
But because of their apocalyptic language and the general revulsion at people enjoying art during a crisis I increasingly believe that the environmental movement also houses a strain of iconoclasm familiar from Protestantism. (I am not the first to have this thought, of course.)
If you read the press releases surrounding the art vandalism, one gets a sense that the art activists think of art as a consumption good or a status good that is evidently less important than a clean environment or a healthy or sustainable food supply (etc.)
Now, I am happy to accept that there are ways to think otherwise that may fall victim to nineteenth century religiosity in which Art replaced God (something never far from the surface of the modern civic temples like Rijksmuseum); and that as we weigh up the abstract Gods — modern conception of art as religion or an Instagram moment vs keeping temperature increases within risk bands — Art may lose. Fair enough.
But the making and enjoying of art is also a basic human need, a joyful one even in the most awful moments and locations (recall this post). And by closing the Rijksmuseum Extinction Rebellion makes itself, perhaps unintentionally, the paternalist enemy of joy or (if that’s your thing inside a museum) quiet contemplation. They are not just making a point, that point also entails a value judgment about what matters they have not earned.
How one protests is also a signal about the alternative one wishes to conceive. I totally get why the modern environmental movement is edging toward asceticism. Most of our consumption generates awful externalities. And if you sincerely believe that technology and innovation will not generate sufficient solutions, less consumption has to be an important option on the table. It’s totally fair to attack the financial system for its role in climate crisis. But in the range of harms, the externalities produced by the art sector are (leaving aside some private jets among certain collectors) trivial. To put it simply, but imprecisely: the activists have lost the plot.
A few weeks ago, I noted that one of the oddities of our age — for those living in liberal democracies — is the inability of environmentalists and those friendly to the environmental movement to politicize climate change in such a way such that any national or federal election seems a decisive referendum on, say, the fate of the Paris accords or a path toward sustainability. In fact, in Great Brittain there has been indifference to the disproportionate punishment meted out in response to the civil disobedience of the Just Stop Oil movement. That indifference is also on the horizon in the Netherlands.
But, of course, society’s increasing indifference toward the activists is itself disastrous. For the collective action problem will not solve itself. In fact, my suspicion is that this problem will only be solved if we can either recover a sense of ‘we’ or ‘unity’ such that collective sacrifices feel truly meaningful, or we end up with a massive religious revival in which saving the climate will play a leading role.* So, to be precise: my criticism of the activists is not centered on their apparent religiosity, but rather on its expression.
*How to combine any of this with my liberal commitments, I leave for another time.