Around a dozen UK Scientist Rebellion activists protested at the Shell HQ in London on Wednesday as part of a worldwide civil disobedience action in more than 25 countries involving more than a 1000 scientists.
The wave of global protest, under the slogan “1.5°C is dead, climate revolution now!”, targeted governmental, scientific and corporate institutions with disruptive, non-violent civil disobedience, to highlight the urgency and injustice of the climate and ecological crisis.
The actions followed Monday’s publication of the third ‘working group’ of the IPCC’s 6th assessment report, which makes the strongest demands yet for a rapid emergency transition away from fossil fuels. UN General Secretary António Guterres gave a speech in which he described government and corporate leaders as liars, calling for grassroots movements to take climate action.
The UK government’s new Energy Security Strategy published yesterday, while trumpeting a green revolution, actually promises a “new lease of life” for North Sea oil and gas fields, as well as a huge expansion in nuclear generation, and companies like Shell spend vast amounts on green energy disinformation, while their business plans remain firmly rooted in fossil-fuel extraction.
In London on Wednesday, scientists pasted relevant peer-reviewed scientific papers on the walls of Shell’s offices, and threw fake oil at the building to signify the pollution they create and the mess they leave behind wherever they exploit resources. One scientist, an astrophysics PhD researcher, was arrested at the scene.
Actions in Madrid, Copenhagen, Venice, Turin, Rome, Panamá, Portland, Los Angeles, Netherlands, Switzerland, Ecuador, Portugal, Sierra Leone, Malawi, Rwanda, and elsewhere saw dozens of detentions and arrests in what the group described as the largest civil disobedience campaign by scientists in history.
In our short film on Thursday, astrophysicist Lucy Hogarth said, “I don’t know what else to do to show how much companies like Shell have defaced science…to make this into a political debate when it never should have been. It’s against everything that drives me as a scientist.”
