Just Stop Oil disrupt traffic to demand an end to new oil and gas

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Image: Just Stop Oil

Just Stop Oil supporters have stopped traffic on key routes in Central London today to demand that the government halts all new oil and gas licences and consents.

At 8:00am, around 15 Just Stop Oil supporters wearing hi-vis vests walked onto the road at Bricklayers Arms roundabout in South London and proceeded to march slowly along the Old Kent Road,  causing delays to rush hour traffic.  The march continued through South London, followed by at least 3 police vehicles and up to 10 police officers.

A further march followed at Bank junction in the City.

Sam Griffiths, 47, a Dad and designer from London said:   

“I feel sick seeing how little is happening to address climate breakdown, the biggest crisis humanity has ever faced. And our Government is actively making things worse. Granting over 100 new oil licences is indefensible and goes against everything that science says we need to do.    

“I started actively supporting Just Stop Oil after we had 40°C in the UK for the first time in recorded history. It scared the shit out of me. I looked at my boy and realised I couldn’t just continue to do nothing. 

“I’m sick of the weasel words of our politicians. Fake crying at COP then getting back home to sign more oil deals. It’s disgusting and will kill everything we love… if we let it happen. I’m no longer prepared to just stand by and watch.” 

Image: Just Stop Oil

Margaret Reid, 51, a former museum professional from Kendal who recently spent 7 weeks in prison for taking action with Just Stop Oil said:

“We are in a climate emergency right now. We no longer have the luxury of delay and indecision – that time is over. Against all humanity, morality and basic common sense, the government and the fossil fuel industry are taking actions that will continue to destroy us. They’ve been doing it for decades. So now, here, in 2022, we have to stand up for our own futures – and we have to take our own immediate action to stop them. 

“The climate crisis will affect all of us and it will destroy all our futures so, like it or not we’re all in this together.  We need to act right now, to act decisively and to act together.  We have so little time left, I am willing to try anything that might work.”

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Protesters hold demonstrations in Harrods, British Museum and Scottish Power HQ over surging energy bills

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https://inews.co.uk/news/protesters-hold-demonstrations-in-harrods-british-museum-and-scottish-power-hq-over-surging-energy-bulls-2008244

Activists held protest in Harrods, the British Museum and Scottish Power headquarters today (3 December), as part of national demonstrations against surging energy bills and fuel poverty.

Don’t Pay UK, Fuel Poverty Action, Just Stop Oil and others groups held a series of what they describe as ‘warm-up’ protests.

Activists entered the British Museum’s great hall – the largest indoor public square in Europe – where they also protested against the Bloomsbury venue’s sponsorship links with oil giant BP.

Just Stop Oil supporters cosy up at Harrods on Fuel Poverty Day of Action

Image: Just Stop Oil, Rich Feldgate

Just Stop Oil supporters have occupied beds and sofas in Harrods to demand that the government Just Stop Fuel Poverty by insulating homes and ending our reliance on expensive, dangerous and dirty fossil fuels. 

At around 1pm, 4 Just Stop Oil supporters briefly occupied beds and sofas in Harrods department store on Brompton Road in central London and displayed signs reading “Just Stop Oil, Just Start Insulation”, “Just Stop Fuel Poverty” and “Oil Equals Death”. They were rapidly escorted out of the store by around 20 security guards.

Image: just Stop Oil.

Just Stop Oil supporters are acting today in solidarity with Fuel Poverty Action’s Energy For All campaign and the Don’t Pay UK campaign. The action is one of several Warm-Ups taking place across the UK in towns and cities including Glasgow, Liverpool, Bristol and London in support of the Warm This Winter coalition’s Day of Action on fuel poverty.

A spokesperson for Just Stop Oil said 

“This government is allowing ordinary people to starve and freeze this winter as greedy energy companies squeeze every last penny out of us. The health service is in crisis, workers’ wages are being squeezed, and nurses are using food banks. Austerity is a political choice and the cost of living crisis is an unprovoked attack on ordinary people.

“Worse still, rocketing energy prices are funding the companies who are torching the climate. Rishi Sunak’s government plans to allow over 100 new UK fossil fuel projects. They are signing our death warrants. New oil and gas is criminal, an act of genocide against billions of people in the poorest countries on earth, and an act of war against the young.

“If the government really cared about ordinary people, as they keep claiming, we’d see an emergency response to the climate and cost of living crisis. Everyone would have their basic energy needs met and bills would be shrunk through insulation, renewables and free public transport, paid for by the fossil fuel companies and the rich.”

National Energy Action estimates that as a result of rising energy costs, around 2.2 million more people have fallen into fuel poverty this year in the UK raising the total figure to 6.7 million. The chancellor’s decision to further raise the energy price cap in 2023 could see the number of households in fuel poverty rise from the current 7 million this winter to 8.6 million households by next April according to the End Fuel Poverty Coalition

Continue ReadingProtesters hold demonstrations in Harrods, British Museum and Scottish Power HQ over surging energy bills

Endless debates about soup and paintings serve those who’d prefer we ignore the climate crisis

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Just Stop Oil activists with their hands glued to the wall after throwing tomato soup on Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers at the National Gallery. Photograph: Just Stop Oil/AFP/Getty Images. dizzy: I’m assuming that this is a JSO image really.

Zoe Williams

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/dec/01/debates-soup-paintings-action-climate-crisis-just-stop-oil-xr

Opponents of meaningful action are trying to sidestep the immediacy of the threat to our planet

Expert opinion is settled and public opinion united on the urgency of climate action. If our politics or our discourse were in any way functional, there would be no confusion, no debate. We would simply be proceeding from one bold practical action to the next, following the blueprints laid out by the Climate Change Committee.

Instead, we have energy policies stitched together from reheated cliches, which on the one hand doesn’t matter, since no prime minister has been stable or focused enough to iterate them since Brexit, but on the other hand does matter. There is nothing more depressing than to go back to Amber Rudd’s “energy reset” speech of 2015: what if, instead of dismissing renewables incentives as “Blairite”, she’d actually taken them seriously and built on them? What if she’d pushed energy-efficient homes instead of the “unfettered market”, what if she’d made a plan to reduce dependence on gas from Vladimir Putin rather than increase it? “Spoiler alert,” wrote the renewables entrepreneur Bruce Davis at the time: “this doesn’t end well for bill payers.” And nor has it.

Obviously, Conservatives are only interested in their own internal dumb-and-dumber popularity contests, and cannot be trusted to make sound, long-term decisions in the national interest. They degrade everything in public life. But they only get away with this because of the discursive cover provided by pointless debates about climate action.

Continue ReadingEndless debates about soup and paintings serve those who’d prefer we ignore the climate crisis

Dewsbury man who took part in M25 Just Stop Oil protests defends action

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https://www.itv.com/news/calendar/2022-11-30/convicted-grandad-says-just-stop-oil-m25-protests-absolutely-necessary

A grandfather from West Yorkshire who took part in environmental protests which caused chaos on the country’s busiest motorway has defended the action as “absolutely necessary”.

Just Stop Oil supporters brought the M25 to a standstill over a number of days earlier this month by climbing onto overhead gantries during rush hour, forcing the police to close large sections of the motorway.

Anthony Whitehouse, 71, from Dewsbury, was among 63 people arrested. He later pleaded guilty to a charge of public nuisance and was due to be sentenced at Westminster Magistrates Court on Wednesday.

Whitehouse said: “We did it for the very necessary reason the government are not acting according to what is needed to prevent the climate emergency that is happening all around us.

“So unless we do take strong action to make people aware of what is coming down the tracks, then my children and my grandchild are going to suffer immensely.”

https://www.itv.com/news/calendar/2022-11-30/convicted-grandad-says-just-stop-oil-m25-protests-absolutely-necessary

Continue ReadingDewsbury man who took part in M25 Just Stop Oil protests defends action

Just Stop Oil activist jailed for 6 months

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Climate campaigner Jan Goodey jailed over M25 protest

A Just Stop Oil protester has been jailed after a protest which saw “mile after mile” of tailbacks on the M25.

Jan Goodey, 57, of Brighton, admitted causing a public nuisance and was given a six-month prison sentence at Westminster Magistrates’ Court.

On 7 November he climbed up an overhead gantry at Junction 16 for the M25/M40 turn-off during the morning rush hour.

The judge told Goodey, who had carried out the protest with a high-visibility jacket and climbing equipment: “You deliberately set out and equipped yourself to cause the disruption that you did.”

Goodey was also told to pay a £187 statutory surcharge by 31 July.

Continue ReadingJust Stop Oil activist jailed for 6 months