SUVs have dominated global vehicle sales since the late 2010s, their share in the total global fleet is estimated to be approximately 30–35% by 2025. Since they are extremely pollutant the ELF was targeting these vehicles by vandalising them, puncturing their tyres. A decentralized, international climate activist group called the “Tyre Extinguishers” is active even today, they are deflating the tires of SUVs in urban areas to protest their environmental impact.
Climate change may have more negative effects on edelweiss populations than human disturbance alone, and explicitly situates the plant within broader evidence that alpine plant life is threatened by climate change. Edelweiss is a cold-adapted alpine plant associated with rocky, nutrient-poor mountain habitats. As temperature zones shift upslope, alpine species are compressed toward smaller upper-elevation refuges. Edelweiss can therefore be understood as a plant whose long-standing symbolic bond to snow, ice, and altitude is becoming ecologically unstable under the same warming dynamics that are visibly erasing glaciers.
(See the object in the courtyard.)