BP Fortnight of Shame

The BP Fort­night of Shame is a call to action from the UK Tar Sands Net­work, Ris­ing Tide and the Camp for Cli­mate Action to force BP to reverse their crazy plans to move into Canada’s tar sands. It runs between the annu­al Fos­sil Fools Day on April 1st, which in recent years has seen a flur­ry of action against the fos­sil fuels indus­try, and BP’s Annu­al Gen­er­al Meet­ing on April 15th. Grass­roots groups across the UK, in sol­i­dar­i­ty with First Nations indige­nous peo­ples, will be tak­ing action to stop BP’s dead­ly plans in their tracks. This will include a glob­al day of action on Sat­ur­day 10th April. All are encour­aged to get involved.

Why Tar Sands?

Attempts to avert the plan­et from slid­ing into cli­mate cri­sis are being threat­ened by a sin­gle mas­sive project in the Cana­di­an wilder­ness. Already, mil­lions of bar­rels of tar sands oil are being extract­ed every day, pro­duc­ing three to five times as many green­house gas emis­sions as con­ven­tion­al oil. The extrac­tion process is immense­ly resource-inten­sive, cur­rent­ly using enough nat­ur­al gas every day to heat 3.2 mil­lion Cana­di­an homes. Add to this the mass defor­esta­tion the projects are caus­ing, rid­ding us of des­per­ate­ly need­ed car­bon sinks, then it becomes clear this project can­not be allowed to con­tin­ue if we are seri­ous about pre­vent­ing run­away cli­mate change.

The effects tar sands are hav­ing on local First Nations indige­nous com­mu­ni­ties are dev­as­tat­ing. The tar sands devel­op­ment in Alber­ta cov­ers an area the size of Eng­land, with tox­ic tail­ing ponds so huge they are vis­i­ble from space, leak­ing poi­sons into the local water sup­ply. Not only are indige­nous liveli­hoods and futures being destroyed, but com­mu­ni­ties on land where tar sands extrac­tion has been imposed are expe­ri­enc­ing dis­turbing­ly high rates of rare forms of can­cer and auto-immune dis­eases.

Why BP?

BP are the only major oil com­pa­ny with no tar sands extrac­tion projects cur­rent­ly in oper­a­tion. This is about to change. Since 2007, BP have qui­et­ly ditched the ‘Beyond Petro­le­um’ sham, because invest­ing in renew­ables sim­ply was­n’t mak­ing them enough prof­it. They have decid­ed to go Back to Petro­le­um, with a vengeance, under the lead­er­ship of new Chief Exec­u­tive Tony Hay­ward.

Mov­ing into tar sands was one of the first steps Tony Hay­ward took, acquir­ing a half share in the Sun­rise Project with Husky Ener­gy. The Sun­rise Project will be huge, pro­duc­ing 200,000 bar­rels of filthy oil a day, and using Steam-Assist­ed Grav­i­ty Drainage (SAGD), an extrac­tion process even more ener­gy and water inten­sive than the more vis­i­ble sur­face-min­ing oper­a­tions.

The reces­sion has giv­en us a win­dow of oppor­tu­ni­ty. BP have been forced to post­pone their final deci­sion on whether to go ahead until the sec­ond half of 2010. This means it is not too late for us to stop this out­ra­geous project. BP are des­per­ate for Sun­rise to go ahead, and will cer­tain­ly not go down with­out a fight, but with effec­tive and sus­tained action we can win this one.
What can I do?

Local groups across the UK, from Brighton to Scot­land, are already engaged in plot­ting and plan­ning for the Fort­night of Shame. If your local group isn’t already plan­ning some­thing, then get sug­gest­ing ideas. If you haven’t already got a local group, then check out the local groups that form the Camp for Cli­mate Action net­work. All are open to every­one to join.