In its latest act of vandalism, the climate activist group Just Stop Oil has stained Stonehenge orange.
The climate extremists known for stunts such as gluing themselves to highways and vandalising paintings, attacked the 4,000-year-old ancient Neolithic monument located in southern England on Wednesday, once again in the name of stopping climate change and the burning of fossil fuels.
A video the group posted to X showed an older man and a younger woman rushing the site while holding fire extinguishers that they then used to spray orange paint. Tourists at the scene immediately attempted to stop them but the pair had already reached two of the gigantic stones leaving a wide strip of orange on each of them. The pair of activists were then quickly arrested.
Likely to attract as much attention as possible, the group chose the day before the summer solstice for this latest movement of mayhem. Famously, the formation of rocks is perfectly aligned so that on the day of the summer solstice the sun rises directly in the middle of a circle of gigantic rectangular stones. The site is theorized by archeologists and anthropologists to have been used for Celtic and pre-Celtic rituals. Tourists throng the place in the leadup to the summer solstice, which this year falls on June 20th.
The group claimed the painting would not cause permanent damage and would “wash away” with the next rain. However, other groups engaging in similar acts of property damage have made the same claim. When the German group “Last Generation” stained the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, it took extensive cleaning work costing over 100,000 euros to eliminate the paint that had penetrated the sandstone. British authorities are still assessing the damage done to Stonehenge.
Various politicians condemned the attack:
Just Stop Oil formed in 2022 to demand an end to new oil and gas exploration in the British waters of the North Sea. Its numerous protests have aimed at disrupting events, institutions, or aspects of daily life and thousands of its activists have been arrested or face jail time.
