On June 19, shortly after opening time at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, a young man named Marcel walked up to Pablo Picasso’s "L'hétaïre" and threw pink paint across its protective glass covering. It was a climate protest, part of a three-week “action phase” by the group Last Generation Canada, which is calling on the Canadian government to establish a climate disaster protection agency.

It’s probably a safe bet that many people would have found Marcel’s action incomprehensible. And not just because they find the tactic of targeting artwork baffling — but also because there is such a widening gulf between the escalating severity of our climate predicament and its declining priority in our politics and public opinion.

What could possibly cause a young person like Marcel to do something so drastic and provocative? Doesn’t he know we have tariffs to contend with and a world filled with more immediate crises? Climate change can wait, we seem to have decided.

The drop in public priority is grossly out of sync with the worsening reality of climate change. The past years have seen a marked jump in global heating and most people are blithely unaware of the latest string of spine-chilling scientific observations.

Groups like Last Generation stubbornly refuse to look away. And before we take a quick tour of the reasons people like Marcel might resort to seemingly-desperate actions, it’s worth hearing from them directly.

One of the other organizations loosely aligned with Last Generation was Just Stop Oil, based in the UK. And the reason it’s in the past tense is that Just Stop Oil announced this Spring it has put down its cans of paint (and soup) and hung up the hi-vis vests used while disrupting traffic. “It is the end of soup on van Goghs, cornstarch on Stonehenge and slow marching in the streets,” the group said in a statement.

The organization’s main goal was to stop the UK from issuing new licenses for oil and gas exploration. The Labour party pledged to stop the process and has maintained the policy in government. There has also been a severe crackdown on disruptive protests in the UK and activists have received lengthy prison sentences. But ultimately, “We achieved what we set out to achieve,” says James Skeet, a........

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