Why I spray-painted Neova’s office

Many close people to me reacted strongly when I spray-painted Neova’s office in Finland last week. If you are one of them, I ask you to read this text, since you probably know me and know that I’m actually not prone to violence at all.

I won’t try to change your emotions, because you have the right to feel what you feel. It might be disgust, fear, concern, or anger, confusion, even perhaps shame that your friend “did something like that” and “spent time in custody.”

I want to remind you that I am still myself. Don’t forget all our memories and conversations. Feel what you feel, but don’t make the mistake of pigeonholing me as a “criminal” in your mind, because that wouldn’t be fair. I am still the same Ludvig — patient, forgetful, fond of reading, and eager to help. So how could Ludvig have done something like this?

Well, no one wants something that belongs to them damaged. Everyone has a right to peace and to their own property. People may hold different opinions or work toward noble causes, but we must respect one another and the laws we have established together in society. I agree with that.

It was in defense of these principles that I spray-painted this building. I did it to halt and limit the violence currently taking place. As a fossil fuel company, Neova knowingly contributes to the destruction of living conditions on Earth. They are helping accelerate the irreversible heating of the planet. What I did was an act of self-defense. It was an act to defend my own life and the lives of others facing imminent danger.

And really, that is all that needs to be said. You don’t have to read any further. For years, I have been explaining the gravity of global warming. If you have been listening and have taken the trouble to look into what is happening, you should be able to understand my actions even if you wouldn’t have done the same thing yourself. In the rest of this text I just restate things I have said many times before.

Global warming is a matter of violence. Violence takes many forms: if someone beats you, that is violence; if someone poisons your well and you die of thirst, that is also violence.

Look up how many people died during this year’s heatwaves in Europe alone. Look at the people in Nepal fleeing the flash flood caused by a glacial collapse. Have you already forgotten the fires that swept through Sweden in 2018, Australia in 2019–2020, and California in 2025? Or the floods in southern Poland and the Czech Republic two years ago, when train services came to a complete halt? I really shouldn’t have to say anything more. In the 1980s, climate change was a distant possibility; now it is palpable — and this is just the beginning.

The Earth is getting hotter. That is a fact, not an opinion. The result will be an increasing number of disasters — more violent, more frequent, and longer-lasting, claiming more lives and destroying more property. To these dramatic examples, we must add “silent” killers like drought, the salinization of delta farmlands, and the collapse of fisheries due to ocean acidification.

None of this is a coincidence or an act of God; it is the result of human actions. The blood of the victims is on the hands of Neova, Shell, BP, ExxonMobil, and other companies like them. And the worst part is that we are not talking about a one-off act of violence, but violence that is still openly ongoing, it’s still intensifying.

I feel terrified when I think about the future. A bottomless fear, a sense of dread, because an inevitable catastrophe is claiming more lives with each passing year. Each year hotter than the last. Land no longer yielding crops as it once did. Rivers drying up.

I feel loneliness and isolation when so many of my loved ones turn away, cover their ears, change the subject to something lighter, or reel off a litany of excuses. When you silence me, or make it clear that it’s “not the right moment.” Or when you listen and sigh in agreement, but change nothing in your life.

But I do not feel paralyzed. I am doing what I can, and I am not alone. The future depends on the sum of all of our actions. Perhaps, God willing, we will at some point all fight for our lives together. As I keep saying, I am always open to a conversation — all you have to do is call. In the meantime, I am proud to have spray-painted the Neova office in Jyväskylä, Finland.

And by the way, the paint was water-soluble. The rain came the same afternoon.