"Find other solutions to your problems instead of making everyone else's lives miserable," said one man in response to a recent rally by radical climate protesters in London. Just Stop Oil, a group fighting against fossil fuels, has become notorious for its extremist rallies in recent months. Less is known about the group's background.

The group called Just Stop Oil has held yet another slow matching protest through the capital to protest against the use of fossil fuels, along with the activists of the extremist climate protection organisation Extinction Rebellion (XR).

More than 90 activists from the XR offshoot marched across four different locations in central London amid threats from the group to grind the capital to a standstill over the summer, British paper Daily Mail writes.

The latest action to block the traffic of a large number of people has provoked strong opposition from those on their way to work. According to the Daily Mail,One angry commuter approached telling them:

„How are we going to feed our families if you lot are standing here while I am making no money?”

„Have you got a way of dealing with this problem apart from making everybody else’s life a misery?”

Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil have been causing mass disruption all across Europe.

It is worth remembering that last year, activists from the group spilled tomato juice on a £76 million painting by Vincent van Gogh at the National Gallery in London and then glued their hands to the wall.

They also damaged one of Monet’s paintings: they spilled mashed potatoes on it in Germany and then, also with their hands glued to the wall, said humanity is in the middle of a climate catastrophe.

We make this #Monet the stage and the public the audience.

If it takes a painting – with #MashedPotatoes or #TomatoSoup thrown at it – to make society remember that the fossil fuel course is killing us all:

Then we’ll give you #MashedPotatoes on a painting! pic.twitter.com/HBeZL69QTZ

— Letzte Generation (@AufstandLastGen) October 23, 2022

Not long ago, they interrupted the World Snooker Championships.

But their actions impacting the lives of the highest number of people were undoubtedly those when they blocked roads, causing huge traffic jams.

A protest by another climate group, Last Generation, also ended in tragedy. In November, a cyclist was declared brain dead following a collision with a concrete mixer in Berlin. She could have been saved had emergency response vehicles not been hampered by climate change activists blocking the road. A spokesperson for the Berlin fire brigade confirmed that emergency response vehicles had been delayed due to protests by climate change activists, who were blocking the A100 autobahn.

At the time of the accident, activists from the climate group Last Generation were demonstrating a few kilometres away. Because of that, traffic on the A100 had to be restricted, causing traffic jams.

After authorities announced that the woman involved in the accident was brain dead, Last Generation issued a statement deflecting responsibility and accusing of hate speech all those who blamed the climate group for the ambulance vehicle’s late arrival. They also stressed that they would continue their actions.

Hypocrites? Oil magnate heritage, imported fruit, petrol cars in the background

Much of the funding for Just Stop Oil comes from the Climate Emergency Fund (CEF), a US organisation set up in 2019 to fund climate activism.

„We’re their lead institutional funder,” CEF’s executive director, Margaret Klein Salamon, told The Guardian.

„A lot of groups we fund use civil disobedience and high stakes civil disobedience,” Salamon said. „But Just Stop Oil to me is the next stage, the next evolution of climate campaigning, in that they really seem to me to be operating as a nonviolent army with that level of discipline, planning, coordination,” she added remarking that

„I’m so impressed with what they’ve been able to do with extremely slim resources and, you know, not that many activists”.

Last year, CEF made grants of $1.7 million to activists in 25 countries, including the UK, the US, Australia Canada, France, Germany and Switzerland.

CEF operated like venture capital, according to Ms Salamon, seeking out small groups who could benefit hugely from $50,000 to $100,000 donations that would barely make a difference to the larger environmental charities. She explained that:

„We’re looking for ultra-ambitious groups and campaigns, generally that are quite new, that have a plan to scale up and make a huge impact,” Ms Salamon said. Direct action, in which those taking part put themselves in either legal or personal peril, was preferred as a way to communicate the urgency of the [climate] crisis.”

Ms Salamon insisted CEF does not fund any illegal activity. „What we do fund is recruitment, training, organising staff, core staff, etc … and we fund legal protest and disruption,” she said, adding that the fact that some of these groups get into harder edged civil disobedience, that’s their choice. And we think that from a historic and social science perspective, it’s very well supported, and we commend their bravery in doing so”.

Donations to CEF come mainly from wealthy individuals and family foundations.

The fund was started with a $500,000 donation from Aileen Getty, the granddaughter of Jean Paul Getty whose petrochemical empire made him the world’s richest man, a source of some controversy in the climate activist world.

Climate activists are not always very particular about benefits coming from fossil fuels.

In December, Dr Larch Maxey, a climate scientist from Just Stop Oil, told The Telegraph that some of their members still drive petrol cars and fill up with petrol – but rejected the idea that it was hypocritical.

According to the leaders of the activists, they are „victims” of a „fossil fuel economy”.

The behaviour of one British XR chief also provoked outrage when she was seen buying food imported from abroad and driving it off in her diesel car, ahead of four days of protests staged by the activists, causing chaos .

Gail Bradbrook was spotted by a woman buying food that had travelled thousands of air miles from Chile, Vietnam, Spain, Cyprus and Italy. Then she proceeded to load the food into a diesel car, which she has previously claimed she needs because electric cars are too expensive and she needs to drive her son to sports games.

„Buying fruit flown halfway round the world in non-recyclable packaging then driving home in a diesel motor — what a towering hypocrite,”

the woman who saw Ms Bradbrook told The Sun.