The tide is turning on the fossil fuel criminals – now we’ll double down on direct action
June 21, 2024 by Extinction Rebellion
An Extinction Rebellion statement on the historic legal victory at the Horse Hill oil drilling site in Surrey.
A game-changing ruling by the Supreme Court that planning permission for oil drilling at Horse Hill in Surrey is unlawful has shown that grass-roots non-violent direct action – branded ‘extremist’ by newspaper and TV talking heads – is winning.
Fossil fuel crooks, their pet ‘think tanks’, authoritarian politicians and their billionaire media pals have thrown everything at Extinction Rebellion and the wider climate movement over the past few years.
Tens of thousands of people fighting desperately for a liveable future have been smeared as eco-zealots, and threatened with long prison sentences under repressive new laws designed to stop all effective protest.
The Business As Usual establishment has tried to crush us.
The Horse Hill ruling shows that it has failed.
For five years, a disparate group of ordinary people involved with XR and the Weald Action Group fought an incredible ground campaign against UK Oil & Gas and their plan to expand their oil drilling operation.
They scaled oil rigs and tankers. They locked themselves to gates and blocked roads, They marched. And some of them doggedly pursued Surrey County Council through the courts to challenge their decision to grant planning permission for more drilling at Horse Hill.
Yesterday, Supreme Court judges ruled that the planning permission should be struck down as unlawful because the council had failed to take into account the impact of all that new oil on the accelerating climate crisis.
It’s terrible news for some of the worst people in the world, the CEOs of the oil, gas and coal companies. It means that ALL of their planet-wrecking plans in the UK can be judged and found unlawful if they effectively help to create an unlivable planet.
Rosebank and Equinor oil fields in the North Sea, the proposed West Cumbria coal mine. They all now face the possibility of legal action to stop them in their tracks.
It’s incredibly good news for the millions who want urgent action to tackle the climate and ecological emergency, and for the activists battling to make it happen.
At Extinction Rebellion, we say there is only one way to interpret the Supreme Court’s decision: non-violent direct action on the streets and through the court system works. So, do more of it.
We hear the message loud and clear.
As Banksy wrote at Marble Arch in London at XR’s April uprising in 2019: ‘At this moment, despair ends and tactics begin.’
We’ve never despaired. And we’re ready to double-down with new tactics and plans to force climate action and climate justice.
We invite everyone terrified that there’s nothing they can do about the biggest threat the human race has ever faced to join us – because Horse Hill shows that this is a battle that can be won if we stand up and act together.
We invite everyone terrified that there’s nothing they can do about the biggest threat the human race has ever faced to join us – because Horse Hill shows that this is a battle that can be won if we stand up and act together.