Flaring climate protests becoming more confrontational as free speech tested globally
Climate protesters have grown more confrontational in recent years, experts say, including publicly cataloging energy sector leaders and conservatives as “climate criminals,” staging disruptive protests outside conservative organizations in the U.S., while climate activists in the UK have gone as far as attempting citizen’s arrests of water company CEOs.
“It’s been getting worse during the 21st Century, ever since Bush vs. Gore in the year 2000,” Heritage Foundation’s director of the Center for Energy, Climate and Environment, Diana Furchtgott-Roth, told Fox News Digital. “Before that, I think that the relations were better and that they’ve been gradually getting worse. It seems to be worse, worse every year. I would say, and I think partly the year 2000, it’s also where there was more access to the internet in general.”
Climate activists have increasingly become more confrontational in splashy and often costly acts of protests, including throwing soup at glass protecting the Mona Lisa at the Louvre in Paris while protesting food insecurity in 2024, vandalizing Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate in 2023 with orange paint while calling on the German government to stop using all fossil fuels by 2030, and a yearslong international campaign that has vandalized and deflated thousands of tires on SUVs since 2021.
Fox News Digital took a look back at how climate protests have intensified in recent years, most notably in Europe, and how the activism is also playing out on U.S. soil and in the court system.
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In the UK earlier in October, a group of female climate activists were seen surrounding water company CEO Mark Thurston near a train station in London while trying to place him under a citizen’s arrest for “charges” of public nuisance related to environmental damage and sewage spills. The women surrounded the CEO of Anglian Water and linked their arms together before he was seen jumping into a cab.
The attempted citizen’s arrest followed another similar incident in the UK in March, when climate protesters attempted to place Thames Water’s CEO and chief financial officer under citizen’s arrest on suspicion of causing a public nuisance over illegal discharge of sewage and other alleged issues, The Guardian reported at the time.
Confrontational and destructive protests have not played out at the same pace in the U.S. as Europe, but stateside protests also have swelled in recent years.
“For the past few months, we’ve had protesters in front of Heritage,” Furchtgott-Roth told Fox News Digital about the conservative think tank’s office in Washington, D.C.
“We had to hire extra security, and it’s not just the front entrance, but it’s also the back entrance,” she added. “They know all the entrances to our building.”
The climate expert and economist explained that the proliferation of internet accessibility since 2000 has sparked climate protesters to become more confrontational, as activists push the limits of what they say online and are better able to coordinate with like-minded individuals.
The Heritage Foundation’s president is also among a lengthy list of individuals identified as “climate criminals” in a public directory of dozens of individuals stretching from Trump administration officials to oil company CEOs. The directory claims those listed “have played historical and present roles in perpetuating climate destruction.”
“Certain criminals have been awarded specific titles based on the nature of their crimes. Climate criminals designated as ‘Oilgarchs’ are members of Trump’s Cabinet or Mega-donors with explicit ties to the fossil fuel industry. Climate criminals designated with a ‘Lifetime Achievement’ award are actors who have earned a spot in our ‘Hall of Shame’ for their role in driving climate destruction over the last couple decades,” the climate directory states.
The website states it does not call for violence against those identified, instead championing “nonviolent witness and protest with the goal of promoting legal and voluntary changes in behavior.” Fox News Digital reached out to the group for additional comment but did not immediately receive a reply.
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Furchtgott-Roth said Europe’s heightened climate protests are more severe than in the U.S., pointing to European censorship overall as an issue.
“Look at what’s happened in Birmingham in the UK, where they’re telling supporters of the Israeli football team that they cannot attend the game because they cannot protect. That’s a lot worse than what we have here,” she said, referring to a ban on Israeli soccer club fans from attending a Europa League game in Birmingham, England, in November over security concerns.
The economist and climate expert continued that the political climate overall is tenuous, pointing to the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO in 2024.
“I think everyone has to be careful with the CEO of UnitedHealthcare getting killed on the streets of New York, not to mention Charlie Kirk. But I mean the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, he’s not a known Republican or Democrat, he’s just CEO going around his business,” she said. “The world has gotten more confrontational, and I think this has real costs in security.”
The mounting climate protests come as U.S. energy industry leaders face an onslaught of cases that GOP lawmakers are warning could bankrupt the industry and put the U.S.’s national security at risk.
“Every day, hardworking Americans depend on access to affordable and reliable energy,” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise said in a comment provided to Fox News Digital earlier in October. “Despite this, radical environmentalists and local leftist politicians continue to wage war on American energy by going after domestic energy companies in our courtrooms, demanding they meet impossible standards or pay billions in damages. Any regulation of global greenhouse emissions falls squarely within the federal government’s jurisdiction.”
Dozens of House lawmakers signed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court in October calling for the Supreme Court to end lawsuits originating in Colorado that seek compensation from Exxon and Suncor Energy, arguing it’s a federal issue, not a state matter. The lawmakers wrote that the case is one steeped in national security and stability concerns, arguing it could throttle the American energy industry, “if not bankrupt it altogether.”
Similar suits have also originated in Massachusetts, New York, Delaware and elsewhere.
President Donald Trump also has railed against climate change as the “greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world” during a UN speech in September.
“All of these predictions made by the United Nations and many others, often for bad reasons, were wrong,” Trump added.
The Biden administration frequently championed climate change initiatives, with former President Joe Biden warning that global warming was the “ultimate threat to humanity.” For liberal politicians and lawmakers, climate change remains a top priority during the off-season election year and as Washington, D.C., eyes the midterms in 2026.
“I’ve seen firsthand what the reports made clear: the devastating toll of climate change and its existential threat to all of us. And it is the ultimate threat to humanity: climate change,” Biden said in a 2023 speech addressing the “climate crisis.”
“Anyone who willfully denies the impact of climate change is condemning the American people to a very dangerous future. The impacts we’re seeing are only going to get worse, more frequent, more ferocious, and more costly,” he added.
Furchtgott-Roth said American companies are also facing legal challenges from across the Atlantic as European Union directives.
“The European Union is taking a very strong stance against American companies. So there is now what’s called CSDDD, corporate sustainability due diligence directive. Which says that as of 2029, any company that does business in the EU with more than $500 million of revenue, is going to have to abide by net-zero solutions,” she explained. “And declare its climate emissions, the climate emissions of its contractors, the climate emissions of its subcontractors, which is practically impossible to do accurately. And if it doesn’t do it accurately, there’s a fine.
“So it seems like, globally, these groups are trying to take away American sovereignty in the climate issue for goals that are totally unrealistic and ineffective in terms of changing the climate,” she continued.
