How Just Stop Oil harnessed emotions to ignite public concern for climate change

The climate activist group Just Stop Oil (JSO) has announced the end of its campaign of direct action. Many will read the group’s legacy through the lens of public hostility: the frustration caused, the angry headlines, the outrage at its tactics. Not only have JSO activists been spat at, physically assaulted and run over by angry car drivers, but 15 members are also currently serving jail sentences following arrests and charges.

But the intense backlash directed at JSO is not evidence that its campaign faltered. It is a sign that these activists succeeded in emotionally charging the public debate about climate change. They gave the public something to argue about, react to, even mock—and in doing so, made the climate crisis impossible to ignore.

The alternative, an apathetic consensus, would entail passively accepting the dominant approach to address the climate crisis. That means market-based solutions, a faith in technological innovation, and incremental policy reforms within existing political and economic systems. These have arguably to date failed, as global temperatures continue to skyrocket.

Through my own research on climate activism, I have studied how environmental protest influences policy, corporate behaviour and financial markets. Activists can stimulate change, but not through rational arguments alone.

Change happens by making an emotional splash. It creates antagonism, dissent and tension, which are all needed to enliven public debate. Emotions including anger, fear and guilt play a key role in the ability of activists to create moral urgency and force issues into the spotlight.

JSO harnessed this emotional logic not only from supporters, but from critics. Those who dragged protesters off roads, raged in comment sections and professed their hate towards the group were reacting because the group had emotionally triggered them. Like a person who gets under your skin, JSO became very hard to ignore.

As business scholars Thomas Davenport and John Beck argue in their book The Attention Economy, in a saturated information landscape, being memorable—even disruptively—is a strategic advantage. In this sense, JSO “hacked” this logic by demanding emotional and cognitive attention, whether through support or outrage.

Disruptive protests may be unpopular, but they are effective at attracting media attention and public awareness. As many studies suggest, the more illogical or disruptive a protest, the more media coverage it receives—despite coverage not necessarily translating into more donations and support.

Of course, disruption risks alienating some people—but that can actually strengthen a movement’s overall influence. The “radical flank effect” shows that when radical activists push boundaries, they often make moderate voices in the same movement appear more reasonable. Recent research on JSO found that even when the group provoked public anger, support for moderate organisations such as Friends of the Earth increased.

This dynamic reflects what sociologist Thomas Roulet calls The Power of Being Divisive. Being controversial can actually benefit a cause by amplifying its message and deepening support from those already aligned. Polarisation, in this view, is not always harmful—it can be strategically useful. In the case of JSO activists, controversy did not dilute their message. Rather, it intensified its resonance with those already primed to act.

Turning emotion into action

JSO has also uniquely been able to provide direction for many struggling to navigate climate change’s volatile emotional context. As philosopher Glenn A. Albrecht describes in his book Earth Emotions, events such as climate change, mass species extinction and environmental degradation are creating a global emotional crisis, marked by a mix of grief, anxiety and powerlessness.

JSO has effectively tapped into this emotional turbulence, turning despair into urgency and action. Its actions can be seen as emotional interventions for a society struggling to process ecological loss.

Left undirected, emotions related to conditions such as climate change-related “eco-anxiety” can lead to paralysis—a state of emotional overwhelm that prevents people from taking meaningful action or engaging with the climate problem. But research shows that when movements channel emotions—especially by transforming fear into shared action—they build momentum. One study of climate organisers found that protest participation gave people a way to manage despair by reclaiming a sense of purpose and solidarity.

A frequent refrain is that the objectives are valid, but the strategies are too extreme. But history shows that disruptive tactics have long played a role in forcing attention to urgent issues. From the suffragettes chaining themselves to railings, to civil rights sit-ins, to ACT UP’s dramatic interventions during the Aids crisis — disruption has often preceded progress. Movements that are easy to ignore tend to be forgotten. JSO made itself, and its cause, impossible to ignore.

JSO’s campaign may be over, but the emotional legacy it leaves behind—frustration, urgency and debate—will outlast its tactics. The group exposed a society uneasy with the scale of change climate action demands, and showed that public anger is not a threat to activism, but a measure of its impact. If you were angry at them, that’s understandable—disruption is inconvenient. But the real question now is where we direct that energy: towards those resisting climate action, or those demanding we seriously do something about it.

George Ferns is a senior lecturer in business and society at the University of Bath.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.