There are annoying activist groups, there are really annoying activist groups, and then there's Extinction Rebellion, the U.K. lunatic environmentalist cult that busies itself uglying up Old Masters art in public galleries, breaking bank windows, and blocking bridges and roadways in the name of stopping global warming.

Here's their latest, as reported by Reuters:

In a statement entitled "We quit", Extinction Rebellion UK said that in the four years it has been taking direct action, very little had changed, with emissions continuing to rise.

"As we ring in the new year, we make a controversial resolution to temporarily shift away from public disruption as a primary tactic," the group said.

"What's needed now most is to disrupt the abuse of power and imbalance, to bring about a transition to a fair society that works together to end the fossil fuel era. Our politicians, addicted to greed and bloated on profits, won't do it without pressure."

The group said it would focus on strengthening in number and bridge-building to increase its power and influence.

Reuters says they've been "closing key roads and bridges in central London, blockading oil refineries, smashing windows at Barclays bank headquarters and spraying fake blood over the finance ministry building."

Such a charming bunch.

We don't see an apology for those disruptions and the mess they made from this bunch, now, do we?  They claim they have suddenly discovered that those idiocies don't solve global warming.

More likely, they've stopped because they've learned how repellent their acts are to the public.  According to the New York Times, in a piece that ran last summer:

When Extinction Rebellion appeared in 2018, it won widespread sympathy in Britain, where environmental concerns have long been high on the public agenda. Yet the group's disruptive tactics have since become an annoyance for many. In recent surveys by the polling organization YouGov, about 15 percent of respondents said they supported the group, with 45 percent opposed.

Nadine Dorries, Britain's culture minister, wrote in a tweet this week that the painting protesters were "attention seekers" who "aren't helping anything other than their own selfish egos."

What's more, fewer and fewer of them are even believers in global warming.  In 2019, I noted this story from Climate Depot:

An international opinion poll published today reveals that half of the UK population and most European citizens are sceptical about the conventional climate alarm.

Despite blanket coverage of the antics of Greta Thunberg and Extinction Rebellion on the BBC and elsewhere in the media, just 51% of Britons think that mankind is the main cause of climate change.

And it's been on boil now for a while now that the public has gotten sick of them.  Here's a video from three years ago: 

So could that be the only reason they've decided to claim that they will now play nice?

Probably not.  They like doing this stuff, the way a toddler likes going into a room with people working and flipping the lights off and on.

Maybe one of their big foundation sponsors has threatened to yank funds.  They might even be facing lawsuits by their disgusting acts.  I sure hope Barclays is suing the daylights out of them to the extent anyone can in the U.K.  Be nice to see these creeps pay for the windows they broke and the man-hours at labor they disrupted as a result, even if a wokester bank does the honors.

Their efforts to "build bridges" sounds like they might now be after wokester funding from Big Corporations, the way Black Lives Matter used to do, drawing in millions to advance their destructive cause.

Treat this call to temporarily halt "direct action," which is their raison d'être, with more than a steam shovel full of salt.  Whatever their real game is in this, you can bet it's appalling.

Image: Screen shot from SkyNews video via YouTube.