Anti-RBS Action, London — Fri 10 Oct 08

What do a Dis­traught Ben­gal Tiger, a Sacked Finan­cial Ana­lyst, a Home­less Polar Bear, and a Job­less Banker all have in com­mon? Why they’re all vic­tims of the Car­bon Crunch — the con­fla­tion of Cap­i­tal’s tox­ic Car­bon Addic­tion and it’s self-made Cred­it Crunch. Oh, and they’re also all char­ac­ters in a protest dra­ma played out at the Olympia Exhi­bi­tion Cen­tre between some rad­i­cal smart cook­ies from…
• Peo­ple & Plan­et — http://peopleandplanet.org
• PLATFORM — http://www.platformlondon.org
• Ris­ing Tide — http://risingtide.org.uk & http://londonrisingtide.org.uk
…and some shit­ty-brown suit­ed secu­ri­ty drones.

You know how Finance Cap­i­tal oils the wheels of indus­try? [1] Well one UK bank excels above all oth­ers at oil­ing the wheels and greas­ing the axles of the Cli­mate Crim­i­nal’s Jug­ger­naut — and my, how proud they used to be about doing so. Once upon a time, there was a web­site called www.theoilandgasbank.com — a prod­uct of the Oil Bank of Scot­land (who pre­fer “Roy­al Bank of Scot­land”) — but in Jun 06, RBS took it down and stopped using this title pub­li­cal­ly. But why? This was the first major vic­to­ry in a cam­paign waged since ear­ly 06 by a coali­tion of envi­ron­men­tal NGOs (includ­ing Friends of the Earth Scot­land, Peo­ple & Plan­et and PLATFORM) to wean RBS of its tox­ic addic­tion to financ­ing the cli­mate crim­i­nals of the fos­sil fuel indus­tries, and set it on a healthy diet of financ­ing renew­able ener­gy ini­tia­tives: The Oyal Bank of Scot­land Cam­pain. [2]

THE OIL BANK OF SCOTLAND

“In 2007 RBS sup­port­ed the fos­sil fuel indus­try with over $7 bil­lion, while the bank’s embed­ded emis­sions passed 50 mil­lion tonnes of CO2 – more than Scot­land.”
PLATFORM, in ‘NGOs slam RBS for fos­sil fuel financ­ing on the eve of delayed Cor­po­rate Respon­si­bil­i­ty Report launch’, 10 Jul 08 -
http://www.carbonweb.org/showitem.asp?article=330

Yes, you did read that right — one bank in Edin­burgh is com­plict in MORE cli­mate pol­lu­tion than the ENTIRE NATION of Scot­land!

“RBS-NatWest is dri­ving cli­mate change and feed­ing car­bon addic­tion faster than any oth­er British bank. Pour­ing bil­lions into fos­sil fuels and work­ing inti­mate­ly with oil cor­po­ra­tions, the bank is lock­ing huge emis­sions into our future. Peo­ple & Plan­et and PLATFORM are cam­paign­ing for RBS to recog­nise its cli­mate respon­si­bil­i­ties and move its mon­ey from the dirt­i­est fos­sil fuels into sus­tain­able ener­gy.

OUR DEMANDS
We are call­ing on RBS-NatWest to:
• Accept respon­si­bil­i­ty for the cli­mate impacts of its lend­ing. Cal­cu­late and pub­lish the embed­ded emis­sions result­ing from loans to oil and gas projects.
• Adopt a com­pre­hen­sive cli­mate change pol­i­cy, includ­ing a tar­get for annu­al reduc­tions and the strat­e­gy to achieve this.
• Rebal­ance its lend­ing port­fo­lio away from fos­sil fuels and towards renew­able ener­gy. Imme­di­ate halt on all loans to coal and tar sands.”
Oyal Bank of Scot­land Cam­paign — http://oyalbankofscotland.com

WANNA WORK FOR CLIMATE CRIMINALS?

The Oil Bank of Scot­land is proud of it’s score of grad­u­ate recruit­ment pro­grammes and sports a flashy ani­mat­ed Flash microsite to snap up the bright young things fresh from uni­ver­si­ty — http://www.makeitrbs.com (although it’s foun­da­tions are as dodgy as its fos­sil fuel addic­tion — click­ing any ‘pro­grammes’ link on the ‘Pro­gramme Selec­tor’ pro­duces: “Page not found!”)

We thought we’d bet­ter alert atten­dees at the Nation­al Grad­u­ate Recruit­ment Exhi­bi­tion at Olympia 2 that the recruiters on the RBS stand were con­seal­ing the fact that their hands were cov­ered in oil. But with one recon­nais­sance pho­to tak­en and a few leaflets hand­ed out, we were escort­ed from the Exhi­bi­tion Hall by shit­ty-brown suit­ed secu­ri­ty drones. Unveil­ing our ban­ner out­side led to some very sil­ly cat-&-mouse antics, with one of said drones try­ing to stop two snap­pers shoot­ing his fel­low drones attempts to cen­sor a peace­ful pave­ment protest!

Seems the cops had tipped of their Secu­ri­ty Head Hon­cho (one v v unhhap­py bun­ny) to our arrival, so he’d had con­struct­ed a three-crash-bar­ri­er cage to try (in vain) to con­tain us. Per­haps by stu­pid­i­ty (or maybe as a secret expres­sion of sym­pa­thy? tee­hee 😉 our cage pro­vid­ed per­fect ban­ner mount­ing facil­i­ties, and was per­fect­ly posi­tioned to engage the cap­tive audi­ence of career seek­ers queue­ing up to get in.

While recon­noi­ter­ing the RBS stand, I picked up two toys for my nephews, arche­types of cor­po­rate brad­ing arro­gance — wind-up squishy walk­ing globes of plan­et Earth embla­zoned with the RBS logo. This was on Black Fri­day, the last work­ing day of a week that saw RBS shares have 40% of their val­ue wiped out in Cred­it Crunch recrim­i­na­tions. Here’s hop­ing the sham­bol­ic rout of Finance Cap­tal will refo­cus the minds of the RBS Fat Cats on bequeath­ing to their own young rel­a­tives a bioshere still rich in bio­di­ver­si­ty, and stll fit enough to sus­tain human­i­ty’s urgent­ly required low car­bon econ­o­my.

ALSO AVAILABLE: PIX, REPORT, & CALL TO TAKE ACTION

You can also read about our action in an illus­trat­ed report by Peo­ple & Plan­et media and com­mu­ni­ca­tions vol­un­teer, and mem­ber of West­min­ster Uni P&P, Amani Ashraf — http://peopleandplanet.org/navid6525

Mean­while, YOU TOO can help to shape our ener­gy future — by telling RBS to stop fuelling car­bon addic­tion:
• Take Action on RBS: The Oil Bank of Scot­land — http://www.oyalbankofscotland.com/action.htm
• Take Action to Ditch Dirty Devel­op­ment, Tar­get #1: RBS-NatWest — http://peopleandplanet.org/ditchdirtydevelopment/action

Nei­ther the Inter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice nor any oth­er bour­geois court will put huge dirty cor­po­rate Finace Cap­i­tal bod­ies like RBS in the dock for aid­ing and abet­ting the Cli­mate Crim­i­nals in the fos­sil fuel indus­tries. So its down to us to band togeth­er and force RBS OUT of fos­sil fuel financ­ing and IN to sus­tain­able renew­able ener­gy devel­op­ment — join us, and take pos­i­tive actions to safe­guard our plan­e­tary future.

Tim Dalin­ian Jones

[1] Finance Cap­i­tal oils the wheels of indus­try — at least it did until Cap­i­tal’s his­tor­i­cal Cri­sis of Over­pro­duc­tion [3] found expres­sion in the Cred­it Crunch, top­pling the huge Wall Street domi­no Lehman Broth­ers on 15 Sep 08, since when Finance Cap­i­tal’s lubri­ca­tion ser­vices have all but ceased in a parox­ysms of fear and recrim­i­na­tions.

[2] The Oyal Bank of Scot­land Cam­paign — http://www.oyalbankofscotland.com is the suc­cess­ful cam­paign­ing web­site of the anti-RBS coali­tion of envi­ron­men­tal NGOs, includ­ing:
• Peo­ple & Plan­et — http://peopleandplanet.org
• PLATFORM — http://www.platformlondon.org
• Friends of the Earth Scot­land — http://www.foe-scotland.org.uk/

[3] Cap­i­tal’s his­tor­i­cal Cri­sis of Over­pro­duc­tion: “what char­ac­teris­es the 20th and 21st cen­turies is that the ten­den­cy towards over­pro­duc­tion — which in the 19th cen­tu­ry was tem­po­rary and could eas­i­ly be over­come — has become chron­ic, sub­ject­ing the world econ­o­my to a semi-per­ma­nent risk of insta­bil­i­ty and destruc­tion. Mean­while com­pe­ti­tion — a con­gen­i­tal trait of cap­i­tal­ism — became extreme and, crash­ing up against the lim­its of a world mar­ket which con­stant­ly verged on sat­u­ra­tion, lost its role as a stim­u­lant for the expan­sion of the sys­tem, so that its neg­a­tive side as a fac­tor of chaos and con­flict came to the fore.” ~ ICC, in ‘Cap­i­tal­ist Econ­o­my: Is there a way out of the cri­sis?’, trans­lat­ed from Accion Pro­le­taria 199, the ICC’s pub­li­ca­tion in Spain, Jan-Mar 08 — http://en.internationalism.org/wr/315/crisis-01