Last month we reported on two sabotage protest actions, the first against the oil-funded climate-denier lobbyists of Tufton Street, the second against insurers of fossil-fuel projects.
This morning a group calling themselves OilSabs claim to have taken action at three West Country Land Rover dealerships, drilling the tyres of around 100 vehicles in the first action of a proposed new campaign called Sabotage Oil for Survival (SOS).
Citing data that shows 2024 was globally the hottest year on record, breaching the 2015 Paris Agreement’s supposedly “safe” limit of 1.5ºC increase, SOS say their campaign will target UK infrastructure and systems which support “production, development, distribution and burning of fossil fuels”.
According to the International Energy Agency, SUVs made up around half of global car sales in 2023, with figures rising steeply. Nearly two thirds of sales in the UK last year were SUVs.
The move to SUVs more or less nullifies any gain created by fuel efficiency and electrification, because these heavier and less efficient vehicles emit roughly 20% more than average medium-sized cars.
These vehicles are less suitable for urban environments for other reasons too. Their higher front ends pose greater danger to pedestrians, and their extra weight cause more damage and injury in collisions. They take up 10% more parking space, and the electrified versions use far more critical rare minerals in the batteries which are necessary to power their heavier weight.
Transport is the largest single carbon emitter in the UK, and cars are the largest contributor to that output. Despite the clear dangers of planetary heating, IEA research shows that if global SUV emissions were classed as a country, they would be the fifth worst polluters on the planet.
In the context of all this, and in the absence of any real government educational or legislative strategies, OilSabs activists feel moved to make their peaceful but disruptive protest in an unaccountable and covert manner.
Fossil fuel and arms corporations-funded think tanks and lobbyists have corrupted our justice system over the past few years, to the extent that peaceful disruptive property damage is now characterised as violent disorder, organised crime or even terrorism, rather than as a legitimate and democratic letting off of steam to engage debate and pressure society towards urgent change. Such actions can now attract severe prison sentences.
As a direct result of this industry-led repression, we are seeing a sharp rise in unaccountable disruptive sabotage. OilSabs say this is just the start of their campaign, and it is expected to broaden to further targets over the coming months.
Concerned citizens are responding to ever starker warnings on the Emissions Gap and its ramifications for humanity. In October 2024 the UN Environmental Programme called for emergency mobilisation not only to honour the failing existing agreements, (which would still set us on a path to around 2.7º in just the next five years), but for G-20 countries to go much further with rapid action.
