'Tyre Extinguishers' target Royal Oak man: ‘They put lentil beans in the stems’

Climate activists target SUVs, trucks in Royal Oak

At least four different drivers in Royal Oak have found their vehicles with deflated tires -- all by an alleged group of climate activists.

ROYAL OAK, Mich. (FOX 2) - A man who walked out to his GMC pickup in Royal Oak recently found he suddenly had four flat tires, allegedly deflated by an eco-activist group.

It was Thursday morning when the man walked out and found his four flat tires. Typically, this would be a minor inconvenience

"I want people to be aware of this so it doesn’t happen to them or they could catch them in the act," he told FOX 2's Hilary Golston.

Along with the flat tires was a flier that read "Attention, your gas guzzler kills. We have deflated one or more of your tyres. You’ll be angry, but don’t take it personally. It’s not you it’s your car." The flier cited big vehicles as a "disaster for our climate."

"They put lentil beans inside the stems and let the air out slowly," the man said. "I understand about global warming and whatnot but, I mean, deflating a couple of tires is not gonna stop it."

Well yeah… this sort of thing would make anyone angry. We checked with Royal Oak police they confirm they’ve seen a few cases… telling us several tires were deflated. The alleged motive: "eco-activism."

Chris Kobus, the Director of Oakland University's Clean Energy Research Center, called this move nutty and said discouraging people from using bigger vehicles clearly isn’t the most expedient way to combat climate change.

"Factually every point they made us debatable or wrong. That aside, what they are doing is not a solution to anything at all. As a matter of fact, there's an environmental footprint – that tire's going to be inflated using a compressor that uses energy – and there's going to be some extra travel to get that vehicle fixed. What they're saying, if their predictions are true, they're worsening the problem. They're not bettering it," he said.

The Tyre Extinguishers - spelled in the British spelling of tires with a y - are an international climate action group that encourages people to deflate tires on SUVs. Between March and July 2022, they claimed to have deflated over 5,000 tires across the world.