UPDATE: Extinction Rebellion activists stop DLR in Canary Wharf – ‘Business as Usual = Death’
April 25, 2019 by Extinction Rebellion
Email: press@risingup.org.uk
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Website: https://rebellion.earth/
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NEW – What emergency? https://rebellion.earth/the-truth/the-emergency/
At 7.30am today, 5 people climbed on top of a train at Canary Wharf’s DLR station with banners saying “Business as Usual = Death” referencing the financial sector’s role in our collective suicide, and others holding up a banner saying “Don’t Jail the Canaries”- in solidarity with the three protesters currently on remand for last week’s DLR/Canary Wharf action. [1]
Those on the roof include Phil Kingston, 83, Ian Bray, 51, Ruth Jarman, 55, Richard Barnyard, 45, and Nick Cooper, 37. Diana Warner, a recently retired GP aged 60, glued herself to a train window.
No arrests so far, police are present.
Extinction Rebellion demands that the financial industry and the government tells the truth about their roles in funding the climate and ecological crisis. The UK still has the biggest fossil fuel subsidies in the EU, despite government promises. [2]
The action is also a willing act of sacrifice and solidarity with the three people who are currently in prison awaiting trial for climbing on to DLR trains last week to highlight the climate and ecological emergency
The global financial industry is currently enabling climate and ecological destruction on an almost unimaginable level, and a considerable proportion of this money flows through London. “Business as usual”, especially through the toxic finance system, will kill all life on this planet.
Richard Barnard of Christian Climate Action – who is currently on top of a train, said: “We would really rather not be here but the ravaging of God’s creation calls us to do something, anything to stop this headlong rush into extinction on the back of the myth of financial progress and growth and business as usual.”
“Sadiq Khan summed up the State’s response to Extinction Rebellion’s clarion call to take proportionate, urgent action regarding the unfolding climate catastrophe by saying “Let London return to business as usual”. Easter temperatures broke records and moorlands burnt in the North, but Khan’s message was clear: “Let us get on with destroying our future and perpetuating the flawed system that’s robbing our children of a stable future.”
“Empty rhetoric and sympathetic platitudes make it clear that despite a week of disruption, the political classes are not really listening. So further action must be taken in order to drive home the point that a dying planet is not business as usual.
In solidarity with Rebels who have been put on remand for pointing out our house is ablaze, in solidarity with the millions of lives, human and otherwise already being directly and adversely affected by climate breakdown we act again and will continue to do so. According to our consciences and the overwhelming evidence, both scientific and experiencial in order to highlight the truth of these times. That God’s beautiful creation is being destroyed.
“Our house is on fire, our children are screaming to put it out. Act now.
“Furthermore we call on all rebels to come out and continue the rebellion. To continue to make these symbolic and disruptive acts until our country and the political classes WAKE UP. We call on you all in small groups to take these actions autonomously without central organisation, without top down hierarchical structures. We call on you to continue with your sacred duty to rebel . We call on you to emulate and improve on these actions and to disrupt “business as usual” and to do it in love and non-violence. ACT NOW.”
Savannah, 20, student said “Over the past week of civil disobedience to force government action on climate change, arrest has been normalised – imprisonment is the next step. The government deters people from taking on climate change using civil disobedience through legal repercussions, but I’ve reached a point where in order to align myself more entirely with my morality I’m no longer willing to let my actions be bound by unjust laws. After the last DLR action the state used its power to put people in prison on remand, and in response we have to escalate – not back down. “
Rupert Read said “When there was a major risk of the collapse of international finance systems in 2008, the finance sector urged governments to come together to save them because these finance systems and institutions were “too big to fail”. However, when it now comes to the risk in the collapse of earth systems that literally hold all life together, there has been nowhere near the same sense of emergency from the finance sector urging governments to come together to act because “the earth is too big to fail”. Our action is to highlight this hypocrisy and duplicity on the part of those running our financial institutions.”
Notes
Previous release:
BREAKING: Extinction Rebellion activists glued on Robocop style to London Stock Exchange – Time for MONEY to tell the truth on its impact on the Climate and Ecological Emergency
- Extinction Rebellion to focus on the financial sector today (Thursday)
- Aim is to demand the finance industry tells the truth about the climate and ecological emergency, and the devastating impact the industry has on our planet
- Currently there are at least seven people glued on at the entrance to the London Stock Exchange
Today (Thursday), Extinction Rebellion will focus the financial industry and the corrosive impacts of the financial sector on the world we live in. First up the London Stock Exchange where protestors are glued on to the front and back entrances preventing people from entering.
Currently there are at least 7 people glued on at the front entrance to the London Stock Exchange. Their names are Alan Heath, 55, research scientist, Jen Witts, 38, support worker for vulnerable people, Sian Vaughan 53, retired head teacher, Debbie Rees, 57, Gardener and artist, Kef Shimidzu, 55, tutor and learning support worker, Lucy Galvin, 53, civil servant and Johnny Woon, 60, retired. At further six people are glued on at the back including Ben Barrage, 42, tree surgeon and Dr Sandy Biden-Hoskins, 64, doctor of archeology.
The protestors are dressed in suits with Robocop style masks on their faces with the golden Extinction symbol painted on them. On their chests they have text on financial ticker style LED screens saying: ‘tell the truth’, ‘climate emergency’ and ‘you can’t eat money’.
Police are in attendance. No arrests as yet.
Many of the most environmentally destructive companies in the world have their stock market listings at the London Stock Exchange (LSE). This institution literally trades in the devastation of our planet.
These include fossil fuel and highly destructive mining businesses as well as those who are creating ecological catastrophe, such as the cutting down of virgin rainforest for palm oil production.
A support worker at the London Stock Exchange, not giving his name for job security considerations, said: “I’ve been telling people this would happen for years. People said it would be fine and cars would get more efficient but that hasn’t happened on the scale needed.”
Extinction Rebellion is demanding the LSE tells the truth about the true impact of the companies they list. Behind the computers that buy and sell company stocks are human beings. We wish to appeal to their humanity to recognise the existential threat that all species on our planet face and to stop trading in, and funding, the death of our ecosystem.
The LSE has tried to demonstrate environmental credentials by creating a ‘green’ index, FTSE4Good, of firms which are allegedly more environmentally friendly. However, they stand accused of greenwashing with this, for example due to their refusal to remove a palm oil firm from the index, even though their New York equivalent, the Dow Jones Index, has now done so.
Adam Woodhall, a business growth advisor states “I have been watching the slow car crash of ecological annihilation accelerate since I was teenager in the 1980s. I just read about the devastation of the rainforest when I was a kid, now I can feel the changes happen in real time. It is criminal people are allowed to make multiple millions, even billions, trading in the destroyers of our ecosystem.”
Notes
Notes to editors
About Extinction Rebellion:
Time has almost entirely run out to address the ecological crisis which is upon us, including the 6th mass species extinction and abrupt, runaway climate change. Societal collapse and mass death are seen as inevitable by scientists and other credible voices, with human extinction also a possibility, if rapid action is not taken.
Extinction Rebellion believes it is a citizen’s duty to rebel, using peaceful civil disobedience, when faced with criminal inactivity by their Government.
Extinction Rebellion’s key demands are:
- Government must tell the truth by declaring a climate and ecological emergency, working with other institutions to communicate the urgency for change.
- Government must act now to halt biodiversity loss and reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2025.
- Government must create and be led by the decisions of a Citizens’ Assembly on climate and ecological justice.
UK website: https://rebellion.earth/
International website: https://xrebellion.org/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ExtinctionRebellion/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ExtinctionR hashtag #ExtinctionRebellion
Declaration of Rebellion: https://rebellion.earth/declaration/
About Rising Up!
Extinction Rebellion is an initiative of the Rising Up! network, which promotes a fundamental change of our political and economic system to one which maximises well-being and minimises harm. Change needs to be nurtured in a culture of reverence, gratitude and inclusion; whilst the tools of civil disobedience and direct action are used to express our collective power.
Website http://www.risingup.org.uk/;
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/RisingUpUK/;
Twitter https://twitter.com/RisingUpUK
Get involved
Get involved in Extinction Rebellion’s other events
- In the UK, come to one of our events, join the Rebellion Network and let us know how you can help out
- Start a group where you are – locally in the UK or in your country around the world
- Find your local group: https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=11jUqqjTHMThksd4KbvGGzb3I3Cr3PkBl&usp=sharing
- Check out the International XR website, with links to the French, German, Italian and UK websites
- We are holding Collaborative Leadership Calls to help coach people to improve their leadership skills and capacities
- And while your time and energy are the most important things, if you are financially able to donate money, see our Fundrazr crowdfunder.
Soon after xx people brought the City and Canary Wharf to standstill by blocking roads around the x. Many of those who blocked the roads at Canary Wharf were young people.
Extinction Rebellion demands that the financial industry declares a climate and ecological emergency and be part of the solution for halting biodiversity loss and achieving net zero carbon by 2025.
The world’s top banks have poured £1.5 trillion into fossil fuel financing since the Paris Agreement just over 3 years ago, with this financing on the rise each year. There is countless billions more funding projects which lead to rainforest destruction, industrial agriculture and other ecologically catastrophic projects.
Mark Carney, the Governor of the Bank of England, sees this problem, writing a letter to the Guardian two days after the Rebellion started stating: “The enormous human and financial costs of climate change are having a devastating effect on our collective wellbeing,” going on to state, “If some companies and industries fail to adjust to this new world, they will fail to exist”.
He warned of a “climate driven Minsky moment”, referring to the work of the economist Hyman Minsky, whose analysis showed how banks overreached themselves before the 2008 financial crisis. Financial collapse and ecological collapse will go hand in hand.
Andrew Medhurst, who has worked for many of the largest companies in the UK financial sector states: “Bankers are fathers and mothers, possibly grandparents as well as employees – I would encourage them to demand their employers stop financing companies that risk the safety of their children and grandchildren or they must consider themselves complicit.”
A report published by the Sheffield Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Sheffield reveals the UK’s oversized financial sector has cost the economy £4.5 trillion in lost economic output between 1995 and 2015 – equivalent to £67,500 for every person in the UK. Also equivalent to 30 years of UK spending on health services.