The future looks grim under climate change. So why is nobody talking about Just Stop Oil anymore?

Think back 18 months or so ago, and Just Stop Oil were everywhere. Radio hosts argued about growing concrete, roads were blocked and the orange t-shirt became a must-have stag do accessory.

At the beginning of 2025, with climate news gloomier than ever, the group remains active. Last week saw a stunned Sigourney Weaver escorted off stage at a London theatre after two Just Stop Oil supporters disrupted a performance of The Tempest. The spray-painting of Charles Darwin’s grave generated mild outrage. But it’s hard to escape the feeling: where have all the climate activists gone?

Donald Trump’s presidency and the Gaza ceasefire could see a renewed spate of climate protests in 2025, as activists step back from disruption to find a new way to get the public engaged in the climate crisis, experts tell Big Issue.

Political attention has dwindled from Just Stop Oil, the most high-profile environmental campaign group to spring up since the pandemic. MPs have all-but stopped mentioning the group in parliament, a Big Issue analysis shows, with the last mention coming in September 2024, tailing off from a flurry in the summers of 2022 and 2023 when the group’s campaigns inspired anti-protest legislation. At the peak, MPs mentioned the group 18 times in a month.

“I wouldn’t for a moment suggest these movements have become inactive, it’s just they’ve moved from a program of public displays to strategic coordination and planning,” says Benjamin Abrams, a lecturer in sociology at University College London who specialises in mass protests and social movements.

“Part of it is the issue with the attention cycle. It’s kind of just inevitable that when other threats predominate, people talk about other things. The election of Donald Trump has caused climate activists or people who consider themselves people of the left to be hugely concerned about the presidency,” Abrams adds.

“Activists who plan actions will be thinking how they can respond to that change in geopolitical reality. The media is looking in a different direction, but also activists are intentionally strategising because they’re facing a different global political problem.”

Much of the attention gained by climate activists is a result of their intentionally disruptive actions: slow-walking in roads, or blocking motorways. These disruptive and radical protests can increase support for moderate groups, a study published in October found.

In January 2023, Extinction Rebellion dramatically announced “we quit”, stepping back from disruption. The subsequent “Big One” protest, which focused on getting more people engaged with the group, failed to generate as much attention as smaller, disruptive actions, one academic found.

Now, the media is often looking the other way, says Sam Nadel, the interim director of Social Change Lab, a think tank looking at the impact of protests. The cost of living crisis took up much of the attention and momentum afforded to climate activists. “It’s still happening, it’s just getting less coverage,” says Nadel. “There’s signs of diminishing returns from those types of actions, in terms of media coverage,” he added. “That’s making activists think.”

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Anti-protest laws and strict prison sentences are having an impact, says Abrams, but not necessarily putting protesters off. “There is a culture of public silence prior to any big action being taken, which means that when movements are in the planning stage, they’d be less loud than they were a couple years ago,” he says, adding that activists will likely “price in” the prospect of a prison sentence. 

But for small groups, like Just Stop Oil, there can be a “depletion effect”, Abrams adds: “The impact of the prison sentences is to be taking people who are committed activists out of interactions with other people they could work with. They’re not available to train, plan, or give inspirational talks. There are only so many people in a movement’s pool of personnel who will be available.”

Could it all be building to a 2019-like moment, seen as a high point of climate protest, where masses took to the streets for Extinction Rebellion actions and concern for the environment shot up the political agenda?

As Trump’s climate denial focuses minds, this could be a catalyst for action, says Abrams. “People will inevitably be disheartened but also left grasping for an efficacious way to make a difference in a globalised climate struggle. Movements will be looking for a way to provide that way forward,“ he says.

Any big spark needs a set of conditions to be just so, adds Nadel: critical moments, points of fracture, a clear problem, with iorganised groups ready to spring into action and recognised figureheads like Greta Thunberg.

“Combined with populism, with the clear lack of interest in pursuing any actions from Trump and any other climate denying leaders around the world, you do have the ingredients for a new wave of climate activism around the world. Whether that does lead to a moment like 2019 is really hard to say,” says Nadel. “The ingredients are definitely there.”

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