Joe Rogan on Wednesday spoke out against climate protesters who have glued themselves to famous artworks.
His comments on the topic came during an episode of The Joe Rogan Experience podcast on Spotify while he spoke with Dr. Bjorn Lomborg, the bestselling author of The Skeptical Environmentalist. The two covered a wide variety of topics related to the environment and climate change.
When talking about activists who have applied super glue to their bodies and then attached themselves to renowned pieces of art, Rogan jokingly offered a solution.
“They should work in a coal mine…for a year,” Rogan said.
“No, I would never ask that of anyone,” Lomborg responded while laughing.
Earlier this week, members of the Stop Fossil Fuel Subsidies group targeted a prized Andy Warhol piece at the National Gallery of Australia. One of the members tried to glue themselves to the artwork but was not successful.
The incident mirrored other recent protests such as mashed potatoes being thrown on a Claude Monet painting by a German environmental group activist. In mid-October, two protesters from Just Stop Oil threw tomato soup over a Vincent Van Gogh masterpiece in London before they glued themselves to a wall adjacent to the painting.
Lomborg is a statistician and former director of the Danish government’s Environmental Assessment Institute in Copenhagen. He currently serves as president of the think tank Copenhagen Consensus Center, which has the intended goal of finding and promoting solutions for large challenges such as hunger, climate change and education.
Rather than people gluing or throwing soup on artwork, Lomborg spoke with Rogan about what he felt would be a more impactful way of getting messages out about the climate.
“I think, first of all, we need to get rid of the panic,” he said. “They should realize this is not the end of the world. And I think that would take away a lot of this, ‘Oh my God, we got to do something right now!’ And then we can start talking about ‘Okay, how do you fix things smartly?’”
Lomborg continued, “What you don’t fix, getting rid of fossil fuels, [is] by telling everyone, ‘I’m sorry. Would you mind being a little poor and a little colder and not be able to drive?’”
The Skeptical Environmentalist generated controversy upon its publication in 2001 and established Lomborg as a high-profile critic of the broader scientific consensus on climate change. In 2007, he released a follow-up book titled Cool It.
Newsweek reached out to Rogan for further comment.
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