Symbol for substance, hope for strategy
Desde as cavernas de Altamira até aos corredores dos supermercados portugueses, a humanidade tem recorrido ao pensamento mágico quando confrontada com forças que parecem estar além do seu controlo. Os Climáximos, ao furtarem bens de consumo como ato de protesto climático, inscrevem-se numa longa tradição de rituais simbólicos que confundem intenção com causalidade — acreditando que o gesto certo pode dobrar uma realidade que resiste à transformação. O que separa o homem de Cro-Magnon do ativista contemporâneo não é a lógica subjacente, mas a ausência de desculpa: num mundo de dados e ciência, a magia continua a seduzir quem não encontra outra linguagem para a urgência.
- Os Climáximos escalaram as suas táticas do vandalismo urbano para o furto em supermercados, deixando bilhetes a explicar que cada lata roubada é um aviso sobre a crise climática.
- A distância entre a escala do problema — o aquecimento global — e a escala da resposta — seis artigos furtados — cria uma tensão que o autor explora com sarcasmo cortante.
- A comparação com os rituais de pintura rupestre do Cro-Magnon não é uma homenagem: é uma acusação de que o ativismo simbólico moderno partilha a mesma lógica mágica de quem pintava bisontes para os capturar.
- O satirista leva a premissa ao absurdo lógico: para ter efeito climático real, os ativistas teriam de saquear cada supermercado, cada banco e cada villa do país, desencadeando uma cascata global de pilhagem.
- O texto aterra numa crítica mais funda: a confusão entre intenção e causalidade, entre símbolo e substância, revela uma estratégia que prefere o gesto à eficácia.
Há trinta mil anos, os humanos de Cro-Magnon pintavam auróculos e bisontes nas paredes das cavernas, convictos de que a imagem poderia dobrar a realidade — que o ritual bastava para garantir a caça e a sobrevivência. Dançavam, cantavam, e raramente se pintavam a si próprios nessas cenas, como se soubessem que faziam parte da natureza e não eram seus senhores. Eram, à sua medida, os primeiros ecologistas.
No Portugal do século XXI, os seus descendentes simbólicos chamam-se Climáximos. A comparação é intencional e pouco lisonjeira. Como os seus antepassados das cavernas, acreditam que a ação simbólica pode provocar mudança material — que o universo obedece a uma lógica de magia simpática e não às leis da física ou da economia. As paredes substituíram a pedra, os museus substituíram as florestas, e agora os supermercados substituem os altares: furtam bens de consumo e deixam bilhetes a explicar que cada furto é um protesto contra o capitalismo predatório que aquece o planeta.
Um cronista português desmontou esta lógica com sarcasmo considerável. Furtar seis artigos de um supermercado não baixa a temperatura global. Não reverte o aquecimento dos oceanos nem altera o comportamento de governos ou corporações. Para que o gesto tivesse algum efeito à escala do problema, os Climáximos teriam de escalar dramaticamente — saquear cada supermercado do país, assaltar cada banco, invadir cada villa de luxo — até que Portugal se tornasse um caso de estudo que o mundo imitaria, numa cascata de pilhagem que, como o bisonte pintado de Altamira caçado horas depois, simplesmente resolveria a crise climática.
O que o texto aponta, por baixo do sarcasmo, é um abismo real: a distância entre a escala do problema e a escala da resposta, entre o simbólico e o material. O Cro-Magnon tinha a desculpa da ignorância — não sabia que pintar um animal não o controlava. Os Climáximos vivem na era dos dados e da ciência. Sabem, ou deveriam saber, que o furto não é solução. E ainda assim persistem, confundindo intenção com causalidade, símbolo com substância, e esperança com estratégia.
Thirty thousand years ago, in the caves where they sheltered, the first modern humans painted aurochs and horses and bison on stone walls. The Cro-Magnon believed that by rendering these animals in ochre and charcoal, they could bend them to their will—that ritual and image could conjure the fertility and capture they needed to survive. They danced. They sang. They told stories in the dark. And because they rarely painted themselves into these scenes, they understood something the modern world has largely forgotten: that humans are not separate from nature, but part of it. They took only what they needed. By the measure of ecological footprint, they were the first environmentalists.
In twenty-first-century Portugal, their descendants are called the Climáximos. The comparison is not flattering, and it is entirely intentional. Like the Cro-Magnon, the Climáximos believe that symbolic action will somehow trigger material change—that the universe operates according to a logic of sympathetic magic rather than physics or economics. The methods have evolved. Instead of pigment on cave walls, they spray paint on buildings and throw paint at paintings in museums. Instead of ritual dances, they block roads. And now, most recently, they have begun stealing from supermarkets: a can of sausages here, groceries there, each theft accompanied by a note explaining that this act is a warning about climate crisis, a denunciation of corporate greed, a protest against the predatory capitalism that heats the planet.
The logic is pure magic. Somehow, the reasoning goes, taking food from a shelf will reverse the warming of the atmosphere. Somehow, the act of theft will awaken the world to the consequences of its consumption. The Climáximos have constructed an elaborate mythology around their actions—anticapitalist narratives, messages left like handprints on prehistoric stone, perhaps even ritual gatherings in forests where they paint their faces and wear feathers and dance themselves into exhaustion. The problem, as one Portuguese opinion writer has noted with considerable sarcasm, is that this magic does not work. Stealing six items from a supermarket will not lower global temperatures. It will not reverse the warming of the oceans or change the behavior of governments or corporations. At best, it might improve the climate in a small village or two. To achieve anything approaching a global effect, the Climáximos would need to escalate dramatically: they would need to loot every supermarket in Portugal, rob every bank, raid the villas of the wealthy. Only then, the satirist suggests, might Portugal become a case study that the rest of the world would imitate—a cascade of theft and looting spreading across the planet until, like the painted bison of Altamira that was hunted hours after it was rendered on stone, the climate crisis simply ends.
The piece is savage in its mockery, but it points to something real: a gap between the scale of the problem and the scale of the response, between the symbolic and the material, between what activists believe their actions will accomplish and what those actions can actually do. The Cro-Magnon at least had the excuse of ignorance. They did not know that painting an animal would not control it. The Climáximos, by contrast, live in an age of data and science. They know, or should know, that theft from a supermarket is not a solution to climate change. Yet they do it anyway, clinging to the belief that if they perform the right ritual, speak the right words, make the right gesture, the world will somehow transform. It is a form of thinking that mistakes intention for causation, symbol for substance, and hope for strategy.
Notable Quotes
Stealing a can of sausages is presented as an alert about climate consequences and a denunciation of corporate profits, framed as protest against predatory capitalism— Opinion piece summarizing activist claims
The Hearth Conversation Another angle on the story
Why does the author keep returning to the Cro-Magnon comparison? It seems almost too neat.
Because it's not actually about the Cro-Magnon at all. It's about the gap between what these activists believe their actions will accomplish and what those actions can actually do. The cave painters had an excuse—they didn't know better. These activists do.
But isn't there something to the idea that symbolic action can shift consciousness, can change how people think about a problem?
Perhaps. But the author's point is sharper than that. He's saying that the Climáximos have confused symbol with solution. They've convinced themselves that the ritual itself is the work, that the gesture is the accomplishment.
So what would actual climate action look like, in his view?
He doesn't really say. That's the sting of the satire. He's not offering an alternative. He's just holding up a mirror to show the absurdity of believing that theft can solve a planetary crisis.
Is he dismissing climate activism entirely, or just these particular tactics?
The tactics, primarily. But there's an undertone of something darker—a suggestion that the activists themselves don't actually believe in the possibility of change, so they've retreated into ritual and performance instead.
And the ecological footprint point—that the Climáximos have the same carbon impact as any other consumer?
That's the real knife. They're not living differently. They're not sacrificing. They're performing activism while maintaining the exact same lifestyle as the people they're protesting against. The magic thinking extends to themselves.