The spark
Just Stop Oil Strategy 2025
We are in a tough spot. The climate continues to break down, we’ve smashed through the 1.5 degree threshold that was supposed to keep us safe. The far-right is rising. The media is failing to tell the truth and there’s a flood of disinformation. We’re facing repression like we have never experienced before. Our leaders look the other way and continue to make things worse. They have been captured by corporations and the super rich. Profits are everything, people are dispensable. Injustice is everywhere. The system is not reformable and it will fail sooner or later as it begins to buckle under the pressure.
These are hard truths, but this is reality and it’s important we face it.
Despite all of this, we need to acknowledge what the courage and sacrifice shown by Just Stop Oil supporters has achieved so far. The Government has committed to enacting our first demand of no new oil, gas or coal licences. We won! This is a historic victory which has demonstrated the efficacy of disruptive tactics in bringing about rapid social change. The repression we’re experiencing is driven by that – we are being punished for being effective.
We need to continue leading by example and make it easy for people to join us. Tahrir Square, Occupy, the A12 protests in the Netherlands are all examples of mass civil resistance, each started with a spark. This can come from an external trigger event or it can be conjured internally. There aren’t many of us, but we don’t need huge numbers to provide a spark – that is what we aim to be.
Demand
Just Stop Oil by 2030: Stopping the issuing of new oil and gas licences was never going to be enough to avert runaway climate collapse. Humanity must take radical action and stop extracting and burning fossil fuels by 2030. For more information on this demand and how it can be achieved read here.
Pathway to 2030: To protect our communities and achieve this demand, we need a society-wide level of engagement on a wartime footing, and a complete revolution of democracy and economics, that empowers ordinary people over the moneyed interests currently dominating our politics. We need a shared understanding of our situation as well as a democratic mandate to take action. Therefore we will be actively supporting campaigns calling for democratic reform and citizens assemblies empowered to enact real change, so our messaging will reflect this, which you can read here.
Community
In the past Just Stop Oil has at times prioritised action over community. It’s time to change that, we need to find ways to look after each other better and develop spaces to build our individual and collective resolve, but it will take all of us working together to achieve a more sustainable culture.
Action
For this action phase, we are going to reclaim parliament.
We have all witnessed in recent years that there are no ‘silver bullet’ actions that can generate mass media coverage- and the resulting political pressure, without eliciting state repression. This is unavoidable and a sign of our efficacy, but it is also our superpower that we can use to turn the might of the state against itself.
The ask: To take action outside the houses of parliament to the point of arrest as many times as is possible for you.
The storyline: A spark, to a flame, to a wildfire. The A12 protest in the Netherlands built in numbers until it became impossible to police, the resulting political pressure resulted in a major win for their campaign. We want to emulate that trajectory, numbers steadily building over time, each action an invitation to join the next bigger action the next week. We know the minimum numbers we need to do this and to sustain it for an extended period and they are achievable.
The legal strategy: For those who are able, we are asking that we act in solidarity with our friends who are in prison right now and to take action to the point of imprisonment. We ask this because this critical juncture in human history demands great sacrifice from those in a position to do so. However, we do not anticipate unmanageable sentences for those taking action outside Parliament.
We have always said that pleading not-guilty or guilty is a matter of personal choice and conscience. Pleading not-guilty allows us to continue our resistance into the courts and that can be powerful and empowering. But it comes at a cost, many of us have trials hanging over us for years, often with restrictive bail conditions – and when the case comes to trial years later, it can be hard to connect with the original intention.
For those willing to push for imprisonment, we are asking people to consider a different approach to how we apply resistance. For this action phase, we want to expedite any state-repression and imprisonment, so it happens as close to the actions as possible. We will do this by pleading guilty and fully accepting our breaking of the unjust laws which have been written by corrupt politicians and fossil-fueled think-tanks, to serve the interests of those that threaten all of our lives.
This means we will be pressuring the state by exploiting its current weakest point: prison capacity. There is already an ongoing national debate around the logic of early release schemes, whilst courts continue imprisoning peaceful people for demanding climate action. This is also an area of weakness for the government that will not last long as they hurry to complete building multiple new super-prisons.
Background: Gandhi has complicated and controversial history, however it is important that we learn what we can from those who have utilised nonviolent disruptive tactics throughout history.
During his trial of 1922, Gandhi pleaded guilty to breaking the unjust laws of the British Empire, stating that he would “invite and cheerfully submit to the highest penalty that can be inflicted for what in law is a deliberate crime, and what appears to me to be the highest duty of a citizen.”
We will be following this example, by stating at our plea hearings:
“I accept that I have broken an unjust law, that has been created by corrupt politicians in partnership with oil company funded lobbyists, and I fully intend to break this law again should you grant me the freedom to do so.”
This gives the judiciary an immediate dilemma- lock people up for demanding change at the national seat of democracy and invite a backfiring effect, or let people go and the actions become easier for us to scale.
This element is key to highlighting the repression in real time, meaning a clear, coherent narrative in the media between what is happening on the streets and what is happening in prisons. With this, we aim to create a national conversation around this repression at the time of the actions, rather than in 2-5 years time, when interest has subsided.
For more detail on why you might choose to accept the breaking of unjust laws for this action phase see this link.
Prisoners
We are acting in solidarity with those in prison and our friends inside are continuing their resistance. We aim to amplify their voices in the run-up to this action phase and whilst we are taking action, by having them speak directly from prison on Zoom calls and at in-person events. We also want to foreground them in the media by encouraging the writing of blog posts and opinion pieces. We are also proposing that prisoners consider standing for election upon release, in order to further apply pressure in the political sphere. This is an area we would like to explore further in the months ahead.
Conclusion
The situation can seem bleak as the world passes climate tipping points that are becoming a rapidly growing threat to life as we know it. It is important to remember however, that tipping points exist in society too, and generally once around 25% of a population feels strongly about something, it can trigger feedback loops that means that very rapid, broad societal change becomes basically inevitable. Persistence plus luck is what changes society, not genius. The ideas that change the world are the ones in the heads of people who refuse to give up.
For more detail on the action phase and how it will work, we will be holding Zooms and in person events in the run up to action. Every one of us needs to consider carefully how we can provide the spark that can potentially change everything. Sign up here.
Further reading: For more detail on the hole we are in, check out these articles:
* https://jksteinberger.medium.com/what-we-are-up-against-2290ba8c4b5c