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Category: Just Stop Oil

  • Just Stop Oil disrupt the BBC Proms

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    Just Stop Oil disrupt the first night of the BBC Proms 14 July 2023.
    Just Stop Oil disrupt the first night of the BBC Proms 14 July 2023.

    Two Just Stop Oil supporters disrupted the first night of the BBC Proms. They are demanding that the UK government halt any new licensing or consents for oil, gas and coal extraction in the UK. 

    At around 8:40pm, two Just Stop Oil supporters ran onto the stage at the Royal Albert Hall, sounding whistles, whilst holding a banner which read ‘Just Stop Oil.’ The pair attempted to address the audience before being quickly removed.

    One of those taking action today, Kate Logan, 38, A mum of two from London, said:

    “Many years ago I sang with a youth choir at the Albert hall, never imagining I would one day disrupt a performance here to draw attention to the planetary crisis we find ourselves in. But that’s what this has come to. Our leaders and the press have failed us for decades and now it’s up to ordinary people to demand the changes we need.”

    “We cannot afford to fiddle while Rome burns, our children need us to drop everything and act like this is the emergency it truly is. We need the BBC and the wider media to change their tune, tell the truth and connect the dots. The BBC is there to serve the public, it cannot be a mouthpiece of this corrupt government and its big oil pals.”

    Just Stop Oil disrupt the first night of the BBC Proms 14 July 2023.
    Just Stop Oil disrupt the first night of the BBC Proms 14 July 2023.

    Also taking action this evening, Pia Bastide, 29, a community worker from London, said:

    “I’m sorry to harp on about it, but business as usual isn’t working anymore. We can no longer ignore this crisis, when extreme temperatures are scorching Europe right now. Last week, the Secretary General of the United Nations said that the climate crisis is ‘out of control’.” 

    “I refuse to accept that my future is being sold away, one new oil licence at a time, and do nothing. The government is undertaking actions that will kill millions and the BBC is not doing enough to hold them to account. It’s the same old song and dance of false balance, the downplaying of the emergency and repeating government lies.”

    Tonight’s action comes in response to the BBC’s underwhelming coverage of the climate emergency. In recent weeks the BBC has been accused of ‘false balance’ as well as uncritically regurgitating government and oil company propaganda. [2]

    A Just Stop Oil spokesperson said:

    “Humanity is at risk, and so is everything we have ever created. Our works of art, our music and our traditions – we’re terrifyingly close to losing everything. Our cherished institutions like the BBC, are failing us. Along with the billionaire owned press, the BBC has failed to communicate the perilous urgency of our situation and they have failed in their fundamental duty to identify and hold to account those who are responsible.” 

    “We are calling on the BBC to do better. You cannot remain ‘neutral’ on the breakdown of civilization. You cannot see both sides of extinction. You are either fighting for human survival or you are complicit with genocide.”

    “It is immoral for cultural institutions to stand by and watch whilst our society faces inevitable collapse. We call on everyone involved in media, arts, heritage and culture to join us in civil resistance.”

  • Vanessa Nakate on Rosebank

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  • Just Stop Oil: Reasons to be marching

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  • Campaigners Rip Shell CEO’s ‘Cynical Case’ Against Ditching Fossil Fuels

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    Original article by JULIA CONLEY republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

    A large display from the environmental group Fossil Free London is seen during a climate protest

    A large display from the environmental group Fossil Free London is seen during a climate protest in London on April 24, 2023.  (Photo: Mark Kerrison/In Pictures via Getty Images)

    “The only ‘danger’ Shell would see in cutting production is to their eye-watering profits,” said one campaigner.

    Two days after scientists recorded the hottest day on record and warned that the milestone is the latest clear sign that all fossil fuel production must be urgently phased out, the CEO of multinational oil and gas giant Shell claimed that transitioning to renewable energy sources is what would endanger the world and expressed what campaigners called “cynical” concerns for the well-being of the Global South.

    Wael Sawan, who took over the U.K.-based company last year, told the BBC Thursday that the world’s energy system “continues to desperately need oil and gas,” contrary to evidence put forward by the International Energy Agency, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, and other experts.

    “I think what would be dangerous and irresponsible is actually cutting out the oil and gas production so that the cost of living—as we saw just last year—starts to shoot up again,” said Sawan.

    Cost-of-living increases have raised alarm in communities around the world following the coronavirus pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine—but numerous analyses have pointed to corporate greed and price-gouging, not the decreasing supply of oil and gas, as primary drivers of financial hardship for working people.

    Shell reported record-breaking profits of nearly $40 billion last year, doubling its total for 2021.

    “The only ‘danger’ Shell would see in cutting production is to their eye-watering profits,” Alice Harrison of the international human rights group Global Witness told The Guardian Thursday. “Whether blinded by the pound signs or simply willfully ignorant, Shell’s CEO is wrong. Ending our dependence on fossil fuels and transitioning to green energy will serve both the planet and provide energy security for all. Shell [has] once again made their loyalties clear—profit over people and planet.”

    Guterres is among the critics who have warned that companies that continue to invest in fossil fuels will not continue to see enormous profits forever, and as Common Dreams reported last week, research from the University of Waterloo in Canada found that public pensions in the United States have lost tens of billions of dollars due to their refusal to pull out of the oil, gas, and coal sectors.

    “Investing in new fossil fuels infrastructure is moral and economic madness,” Guterres said earlier this year. “Such investments will soon be stranded assets—a blot on the landscape and a blight on investment portfolios.”

    In his comments to the BBC, Sawan suggested his concern is not with his own company’s future, but that of the Global South—where people are suffering disproportionately from the effects of the climate crisis and planetary heating, despite causing a tiny fraction of the fossil fuel pollution that originates in wealthier countries.

    He said the distribution of benefits from the use of renewable energy must be “globally responsible” so the Global North doesn’t hoard energy sources such as solar and wind power.

    “Let’s be clear, companies like Shell are fueling both the climate crisis and the soaring cost of energy,” Jamie Peters of Friends of the EarthtoldThe Guardian. “They are profiting from the misery of ordinary people while destroying the planet, and they’re making a cynical case to continue locking us into the volatile fossil fuel markets that are the root cause of the energy crisis.”

    As environmental journalist Harry Cockburn noted on social media, for all Sawan’s claims of concern for people in the Global South, he made clear that Shell’s profits are his top priority as the interview concluded.

    “Cutting production is only dangerous in the kind of upside-down world where profit rules over everything,” said the grassroots coalition Stop Cambo, which pressured Shell to pull out of the Cambo oil field off the coast of Scotland in 2021. “Even as the planet burns and people are forced to choose between heating and eating.”

    Original article by JULIA CONLEY republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

  • The climate credentials of Rishi Sunak’s cabinet :: Rishi Sunak

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    Image of InBedWithBigOil by Not Here To Be Liked + Hex Prints from Just Stop Oil's You May Find Yourself... art auction. Rishi Sunak, Fossil Fuels and Rupert Murdoch appear.
    Image of InBedWithBigOil by Not Here To Be Liked + Hex Prints from Just Stop Oil’s You May Find Yourself… art auction. Rishi Sunak, Fossil Fuels and Rupert Murdoch appear.

    Zac Goldsmith resigned as Rishi Sunak’s Minister of State for Overseas Territories, Commonwealth, Energy, Climate and Environment on 30 June 2023 claiming that UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was uninterested in the environment. This has made reviewing Sunak’s climate credentials relatively easy because there are many news articles doing it for me ;)

    Goldsmith says Sunak is apathetic about the environment. It’s hard to disagree by Helena Horton.

    There are many similar articles basically saying the same:

    He blocked spending on climate and nature when he was Chancellor.

    “… Sunak refused to sign a foreword to the Dasgupta report, a review of the value of biodiversity. This review, by the respected professor Sir Partha Dasgupta, was welcomed across the board …”

    “He was given a major opportunity to stand on the world stage as the UK’s new prime minister at the UN’s Cop27 climate summit last year, but he flip-flopped on attending, and only flew out to Egypt at the last minute, giving the audience a policy-free speech about how his children care about the environment.”

    Authorised the Cumbria coalmine creating more climate destroying pollution.

    Sunak and his twat Grant Shapps have repeatedly attacked the Labour Party claiming that “eco-zealots” from Just Stop Oil are “writing Keir Starmer’s energy policy”. Sunak is using the Daily Mail’s eco-zealots taunt and attacking Just Stop Oil’s position as unreasonable.

    Since Zac Goldsmith’s resignation Sunak boasted That Oil Funded Think Tank ‘Helped Us Draft’ Crackdown on Climate Protests and wrote an article in Murdoch’s Sun newspaper on 3 July 2023 attacking Just Stop Oil. Let’s take a look at that article.

    People want an end to eco-zealot’s disruption – I’ll ensure we do stop it. Firstly Sunak is aligning himself closely with the climate-change denier and climate destroyer Rupert Murdoch. It’s likely that someone at Murdoch’s Sun wrote this article and Sunak has agreed to have it attributed to him.

    Sunak claims that Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion attempt to “bypass and undermine” democracy through their tactics and that instead “policy should be decided by those who were elected to do so”.

    We don’t permit governments to destroy us and our planet – our very existence – through the ballot box. They don’t have the right to destroy this planet through the ballot box.

    [ED: Fekk I forgot: Sunak has never been elected Prime Minister anyway and has no mandate to do anything.]

    Sunak also doesn’t represent us the electors – he represents the fossil fuel industry and the ultra-rich (may well be the same few people). He’s admitted as much by saying that big oil helped frame the anti-protest laws.

    Sunak doesn’t actually mention his daughters in the Sun article which also lead me to suspect that it was not actually written by him or his staff. Mentioning his daughters is the “I couldn’t be such a cnut, I’ve got young children” sop. He is such a cnut.