‘Climate lie factory that poisons democracy’ occupied by Extinction Rebellion
July 29, 2024 by Extinction Rebellion
Fake think tank Policy Exchange at the centre of dramatic protest for telling paid lies for Big Oil and plotting to jail peaceful climate activists
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Early photo & media link: https://tinyurl.com/y95uk4v9
Archival photo link: https://tinyurl.com/4pyvj77e
Extinction Rebellion activists are occupying the central London offices of Policy Exchange, a climate crisis denial lobbyist, funded by fossil fuel crooks, that pretends to be a think tank.
The protestors entered Policy Exchange’s notorious Westminster offices this morning (29 July) to demand an end to a campaign of lies and disinformation that has slowed climate action and led directly to long jail sentences for activists.
A crowd of other protestors has assembled a four metre high tripod, topped by the Grim Reaper in front of the main door and fake crude oil, thrown by the protestors, appears to be pouring out of the building’s windows into the street. Others have lit smoke flares and are banging drums and waving a large banner demanding: “Policy Exchange Cut the Ties to Fossil Fuels.” [1]
Extinction Rebellion campaigner and teaching assistant Francesca Garlake from Brighton said: “These offices are the very heart of climate crisis denial in the UK. Policy Exchange are not a think tank – they are a lie factory funded by the fossil fuel industry to stop or slow down action to tackle the accelerating climate crisis that threatens to kill billions.
“Policy Exchange spokespeople are constantly in our newspapers, on the BBC, and online posing as academic experts. In reality, they are lobbyists who are paid by oil and gas criminals like ExxonMobil to lie about the danger and urgency of the crisis setting the planet on fire.
“Policy Exchange is poisoning our democracy, bending our political leaders to the will of their oily paymasters. One of their so-called ‘reports’ designed the repressive new laws that recently put five peaceful protestors in jail for up to five years.”
Extinction Rebellion is demanding that the secretive, right-wing think tank – which played an influential role [2] in the crafting of the anti-protest Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act – cut its ties to the fossil fuel industry, reveal who its funders are, end its charitable status, and publish minutes of all its meetings with government ministers. They are also calling on the Labour Government to repeal this anti-democratic law.
Policy Exchange – which receives funding [3] from fossil fuel companies including ExxonMobil – lobbied hard for the government to pass legislation targeting Extinction Rebellion. Its 2019 report “Extremism Rebellion” called for protest laws to be “urgently reformed in order to strengthen the ability of police to place restrictions on planned protest and deal more effectively with mass law-breaking tactics.”
Sections of the then Home Secretary Priti Patel’s controversial policing bill, which became the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act in 2022, appear directly inspired by the Policy Exchange report.
The impact of this new law is already being felt. Last week activists from Just Stop Oil were jailed for four years for taking part in a peaceful protest against new fossil fuel licensing, with founder Roger Hallam given five years for speaking at a public zoom meeting, sentences considered disproportionate by the majority of the UK public [6] and condemned by Michel Forst [7], the UN Special Rapporteur on environmental defenders.
Extinction Rebellion campaigner Dr Jessica Upton, a veterinary surgeon & emergency foster carer from Oxford, said: “Despite the secrecy surrounding its funding, the so called charity, Policy Exchange, is known to be paid by fossil fuel companies like ExxonMobil (Esso in the UK) to lobby for extended fossil fuel extraction in a climate and ecological emergency, and for the draconian new anti-protest laws which are an affront to our democracy.”
Ministers have already raised concerns at Policy Exchange’s links to the fossil fuel industry and its influence on the drafting of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act.
Green Party MP Caroline Lucas [4] said: “It appears that the Policing Bill is stained with the grubby, oil-soaked hands of the fossil fuel lobby.
“And no wonder – this cracks down on the fundamental rights of protestors to challenge the very climate-wrecking policies espoused by this downright dangerous industry.”
Scottish National Party MP Alyn Smith [5] commented: “He who pays the piper calls the tune. We urgently need to rewrite the laws governing this sort of sock puppet funding so that we can see who speaks for who.”
Extinction Rebellion activist Marcus Bailie, a retired specialist safety inspector from South Wales said: “We are here today to demand Policy Exchange Cut the Ties to fossil fuels, and we call on the government to clean up this stain on our democracy. We demand full disclosure of all lobby group funding [8], for their meetings with the government to be documented transparently, the end of charitable status for any lobby group funded by big oil and the other high carbon vested interests which are causing so much harm to people and planet. And we demand the repeal of the Police, Courts, Crime and Sentencing Act.”
Policy Exchange also promotes a variety of other policies useful to big emitters but harmful to democracy and the environment. It has been building a case for curtailing the judiciary from carrying out judicial reviews, it has advocated for fracking, it promotes the UK’s worst carbon emitter, Drax [9] which has emitted 117 million tonnes of CO2 since 2014 and received £6 billion in subsidies for cutting down and burning forests. Policy Exchange also met with an Energy Department minister [10] and officials to discuss the government’s North Sea oil and gas policies in February 2021, just weeks before the government gave the green light to continued exploration of oil and gas in the North Sea.
Climate campaigner Dr Sara Melly, a clinical psychologist, from Winchester, said “This new Labour government has a perfect opportunity to demonstrate it really is about change, by acting decisively on fossil fuel funded lobby groups that are out to increase the destruction of our life support system, our only living planet.”
Extinction Rebellion’s demands:
We demand Policy Exchange Cut the Ties with Fossil Fuels.
We call on the new government to clean up this stain on our democracy starting with radical transparency:
That means
1.Full disclosure of all lobby groups’ funding (present and historical).
2. The agendas and minutes of all meetings with government must be documented transparently.
3. The ending of charitable status for any lobby group funded by big oil and gas and other high carbon vested interests. Their work is not simply “educational”, it is causing undeniable harm to people and planet.
4. The repeal of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022
Link to support further Cut the Ties actions: https://chuffed.org/project/lxkkq3mzp8etwux
Notes for Editors:
1. ExxonMobil gave Policy Exchange $30,000 in 2017. https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/dark-money-investigations/think-tanks-adam-smith-policy-exchange-legatum-iea-taxpayers-alliance-climate-denial/
The American Friends of Policy Exchange, a US non-profit set up in 2010 to “to support and advance the program of Policy Exchange UK
2. Policy Exchange wrote the Police Courts Crime and Sentencing Act:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/dark-money-investigations/rishi-sunak-right-wing-think-tank-anti-protest-laws-policy-exchange
3. US climate deniers pump millions into Tory-linked think tanks
4. Green Party MP Caroline Lucas https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/dark-money-investigations/policing-bill-policy-exchange-exxonmobil-lobbying/
5. Scottish National Party MP Alyn Smith https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/dark-money-investigations/think-tanks-adam-smith-policy-exchange-legatum-iea-taxpayers-alliance-climate-denial/
6. British public opinion on JSO sentences
7. Michel Forst UN Special Rapporteur statement on the recent JSO trial https://unece.org/sites/default/files/2024-07/ACSR_C_2024_26_UK_SR_EnvDefenders_public_statement_18.07.2024.pdf
8. https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/who-funds-you/
9. https://www.desmog.com/2023/01/26/labour-accepted-12000-from-major-polluter-drax/
ExxonMobil
ExxonMobil spent more $37m funding groups promoting climate denial in the US between 1997 and 2008. https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/attach/2015/07/ExxonMobil-Climate-Denial-Funding-1998-2014.pdf
“There is no doubt”: Exxon Knew CO2 Pollution Was A Global Threat By Late 1970s:
https://www.desmog.com/2016/04/26/there-no-doubt-exxon-knew-co2-pollution-was-global-threat-late-1970s/ and https://insideclimatenews.org/news/16092015/exxons-own-research-confirmed-fossil-fuels-role-in-global-warming/
Exxon’s 1982 predictions accurate:
ExxonMobil climate change denial
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExxonMobil_climate_change_denial
About Extinction Rebellion
Extinction Rebellion (XR) is a decentralised, international and politically non-partisan movement using non-violent direct action and civil disobedience to persuade governments to act justly on the Climate and Ecological Emergency.
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Time has almost entirely run out to address the climate and ecological crisis which is upon us, including the sixth mass species extinction, global pollution, and increasingly rapid climate change. If urgent and radical action isn’t taken, we’re heading towards 4˚C warming, leading to societal collapse and mass loss of life. The younger generation, racially marginalised communities and the Global South are on the front-line. No-one will escape the devastating impacts.