Meet the Bristol Tyre Extinguishers

If the world really does face a climate emergency, what ought you, personally, be doing about it? Should you, as increasing numbers of young people are doing, roam the streets at night letting down the tyres of SUVs?

The fast-growing movement that calls itself the ‘Tyre Extinguishers’ thinks this is an effective approach, and has targeted thousands of SUVs in cities around the world. My home town of Bristol – always quick to espouse a green cause – has seen at least 200 SUVs ‘extinguished’ in recent weeks.

Though they claim to be leaderless, the Extinguishers have a Twitter account where you can keep up-to-date with their latest ‘hits’, and a website that generously invites everyone to get involved. It even offers advice on deflating tyres, suggesting that a small bean – ‘we like green lentils, but you can experiment with couscous’ – be inserted into the valve before replacing the dust cap. SUV owners then wake to find flat tyres, and a windscreen leaflet (downloaded from the Extinguishers’ site) which explains: ‘You’ll be angry, but don’t take it personally. Your gas-guzzler kills… millions are already dying from climate change-related causes.’

It would be comical if the Extinguishers were not so frighteningly sure of their moral superiority. ‘Are you not worried about interfering in life-or-death situations?’ asked Channel 4 News of some masked and hooded men who had just deflated the tyres of a doctor’s car at 3 a.m. in Bristol’s Clifton Village. ‘No, no,’ they replied. ‘Because we are helping to save the lives of billions worldwide.’

Do they have a point? After all, many SUVs are unnecessarily big, require needlessly large amounts of material to make, take up a lot of road and, crucially, consume more fuel than smaller cars.