News articles about the protests at oil terminals that started today.
Inside Just Stop Oil, the youth climate group blocking UK refineries
A band of 20-year-olds have made headlines disrupting football games, the Baftas and now oil facilities across the UK. But what do they want?
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At a recruitment meeting last Thursday in Camden, north London, Larch Maxey, a veteran eco-campaigner, said the aim was “to build a community of civil resistance in response to the climate change science”.
“In 2022 you have got tens of thousands of peer-reviewed papers spelling out the climate science,” he said. Authorities such as David Attenborough and David King, the former government chief science officer, were in agreement, he said: there is a narrow window of two to three years in which to act. “We are facing the end of civilisation if we do not act on the climate emergency. We are heading towards societal collapse.
“When your house is on fire, you stop pouring petrol on the flames,” he said. “That’s basically the demand – no new licences. We are in a crisis. Let’s stop digging out new oil and gas.”
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The key shift in Just Stop Oil is what its supporters say is a move from civil disobedience and into civil resistance. What that means, as Jess Causby, 25, a supporter of the campaign, told the Guardian last month, “is stopping pointing out what the government should or shouldn’t be doing [and instead] actively stopping government doing what they shouldn’t be.”
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END FOSSIL FUELS NOW: Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil block oil facilities across the UK
April 01, 2022 by Extinction Rebellion
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The government is making a choice to continue its addiction to fossil fuels as war wages in Ukraine, instead of accelerating the transition to a renewable led future. They could choose not to. Just a few months on from the “last chance” of COP26, Boris Johnson now claims the current crisis demands a “climate change pass”.[6] The Prime Minister says he wants to “remove barriers” to increased extraction of fossil fuels from the North Sea and has now gone begging Saudi Arabia to increase its oil supply.[7][8] The UK is also set to approve licenses for 40 new fossil fuel projects.[9]
The recent IPCC report tells us in no uncertain terms that the window is closing on adaptation, let alone mitigation.[10] The Environment Agency put it bluntly in its October 2021 report: Adapt or Die.[11] Breakdown is happening in a way that isn’t allowing time for adaptation. According to the UN Secretary General, staying on fossil fuels will cause an atlas of human suffering and ‘delay means death’.[12][13]
All of this is taking place despite recent polling showing that the UK public wants climate action now in face of the energy crisis.[14] As fossil fuel multinationals use the war in Ukraine to lobby for new extraction, they are also getting huge tax breaks, while its expected that 1 in 4 people in the UK will not be able to pay their bills by September.[15][16]
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[6] https://www.netzerowatch.com/boris-johnsons-climate-change-pass-for-natural-gas-welcomed/
[7] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/energy-oil-gas-ukraine-boris-johnson-b2035408.html
[8] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/boris-johnson-saudi-oil-executions-b2037442.html
[10] IPCC key takeaways: https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/key-takeaways-ipcc-report-climate-impacts-adaptation-2022-02-28/
[12] https://www.politico.eu/article/landmark-climate-report-details-an-atlas-of-human-suffering/
Just Stop Oil protests: Terminal operations suspended and arrests made
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Extinction Rebellion spokesman Andy Smith said the group had “held” three locations of strategic importance to the UK’s energy network:
- Esso West, near Heathrow Airport
- Esso Hythe, Southampton
- BP Hamble, also Southampton
Campaigners from the Just Stop Oil group say they are protesting at seven other sites:
- Inter Terminals UK, Grays, Essex
- Navigator Terminals Thames, Grays, Essex
- Buncefield Oil Depot, Hemel Hempstead
- Esso Birmingham
- Purfleet Fuels Terminal, Essex
- Kingsbury Oil Terminal, Warwickshire
- BP Depot, Tamworth
Operations had been halted at Hythe, Birmingham, Purfleet and West London terminals, said ExxonMobil.
The company said its terminal at Avonmouth, Bristol, was not affected by the demonstrations.
It apologised for any inconvenience.
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and from the right-wing bigots …
Patrick Christys: Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil are domestic terrorists who need locking up
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And yet here we are. These environmental bandits are at it again.
Hundreds of eco activists from Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil have blocked ten major oil terminals across England in a mass protest amid demands that the Government stops new oil and gas projects.
They’re blocking oil tankers from leaving the sites, which, if it continues, would only serve to push up the price of oil more.
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Some bloke who’s never worked a day in his life, doesn’t care about money because he wants us all to live in a vegan hippy commune using moss for mattresses is making the cost of living crisis even worse.
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These eco bandits are a menace.