Category: Oil

San­tas Against Exces­sive Con­sump­tion (SAEC) went out to play for the sec­ond year run­ning on Sat­ur­day Decem­ber 16th 2006, drop­ping in on the Shell-spon­sored Nat­ur­al His­to­ry Muse­um (NHM) on the way to the con­sumer hell that is Oxford Street.

At the NHM we wan­dered through the crowds hold­ing our ‘Lap­p­land is melt­ing’ and ‘Rein­deer can’t swim’ plac­ards, explain­ing that exces­sive con­sump­tion was melt­ing our ho-ho-home, and as such it was going to be tough to ensure a good sup­ply of presents in the future. We had a bit of inter­ac­tion with peo­ple wait­ing to skate on the British Air­ways-spon­sored ice rink. Half the rink was closed because it was too wet and slushy — the ice had melt­ed. The employ­ee with the thank­less task of try­ing to herd us out dis­agreed with me when I sug­gest­ed that this was sym­bol­ic. His word? ‘Iron­ic.’

‘See you next year!’, promised the mouthi­est San­ta as we left, (since month­ly vis­its are planned by SAEC’s friends Lon­don Ris­ing Tide in 2007.) Then it was on to join rein­force­ments in Oxford Street, using the tube jour­ney as a chance to thank the pun­ters for tak­ing pub­lic trans­port a well as smil­ing at bewil­dered nip­pers won­der­ing if we could have any con­nec­tion to the real thing. Tak­ing up res­i­dence at Oxford Cir­cus, some anti-cor­po­rate car­ols were giv­en a good see­ing to, and leaflets dis­trib­uted. A fes­tive for­ay into Nike­town result­ed in a swift but friend­ly expul­sion, while a min­strel-like wan­der into the big Apple shop trig­gered a grumpi­er response. The plea to ‘Sing your own songs to eachother this Christ­mas!’ was inter­pret­ed as some sort of adver­tis­ing by a com­peti­tor, and this as well as some live and direct car­olling inside the shop led to the police being called. But we stood our ground when asked by the hum­bug­ging cop­pers to move away from the shop win­dow, and soon enough they evap­o­rat­ed.

By that time we were pret­ty much Santa‑d out, so decamped to a caff to fill up on caf­feine and divest our­selves of the mag­ic but by this time some­what bedrag­gled beards and suits that made peo­ple smile at us and take our sub­ver­sive leaflets. Take care until next year…

www.londonrisingtide.org.uk
www.artnotoil.org.uk/gallery/v/Shell
www.shelloiledwildlife.org.uk
07708 794665
london@risingtide.org.uk
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Text of the Oxford Street leaflet:

LAPPLAND IS MELTING!

Today is the busiest shop­ping day of the year. Oxford Street is crammed with con­sumers all scram­bling for the lat­est must-have item, the per­fect present that will buy Christ­mas joy. Most of us find this part of Christ­mas incred­i­bly stress­ful — there’s nev­er enough time, ten­sions run high, and the oblig­a­tion of gift exchange rules the sea­son.

So why do we buy in to Christ­mas shop­ping mad­ness? Maybe it’s time to start fig­ur­ing out why we so des­per­ate­ly need a 5‑speed elec­tric tooth­brush in the first place, or why our chil­dren will be dev­as­tat­ed if they don’t get the lat­est McNike­Soft Godzil­la Action Fig­ure that tops The List. It might well boil down to the fact that we are each exposed to 3,500 adverts per day. (No real­ly, try count­ing!)

Cor­po­rate adver­tis­ing can actu­al­ly be seen as the largest sin­gle psy­cho­log­i­cal project under­tak­en by the human race. We are told from the day we are born that increas­ing our mate­r­i­al wealth will make us hap­pi­er peo­ple, and if we want to show some­one that we love them, we must buy them some­thing – the more expen­sive, the more we love them.

Christ­mas con­sump­tion caus­es cli­mate chaos!

The prob­lem is, cor­po­rate con­sumer cul­ture doesn’t just breed stress – it cre­ates envi­ron­men­tal cat­a­stro­phe. If every­one in the world were to con­sume at the lev­el we do in the West, we would need 5 extra plan­ets. But it’s not just about dis­ap­pear­ing rain­forests and moun­tains of rub­bish. Our exces­sive con­sump­tion is also caus­ing cli­mate chaos, with dis­as­trous effects like hur­ri­canes, flood­ing and oth­er freak weath­er pat­terns.

We know that cli­mate change is direct­ly caused by the burn­ing of fos­sil fuels (oil, coal and nat­ur­al gas) to pow­er our offices, heat our homes, and fuel our cars & planes. But tack­ling cli­mate change is not only about tak­ing the bus and switch­ing off lights. Every prod­uct that is pro­duced, trans­port­ed, bought, used and thrown away eats up ener­gy that we don’t have, and cre­ates pol­lu­tion that our cli­mate can’t han­dle. And if that prod­uct is made of plas­tic (and think how many are), then it’s lit­er­al­ly made of oil.

Us San­tas aren’t sug­gest­ing you don’t give your loved ones presents this year. But why not make one or two of them, trade with friends, or buy local­ly. Think about the prod­ucts you’re buy­ing – what they’re made of, where they came from, how they got from there to here…and whether they’re actu­al­ly going to make some­one any hap­pi­er.

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Text of NHM leaflet:

WHAT LIES BENEATH SHELL’S WILD LIE?

Hel­lo and Mer­ry Christ­mas. We are San­tas Against Exces­sive Con­sump­tion, and we’ve dropped into the Nat­ur­al His­to­ry Muse­um on our way to Oxford Street, to sing a few car­ols and to remind muse­um-goers that exces­sive con­sump­tion of oil is caus­ing Lap­p­land – our home! — to melt.

Why is this rel­e­vant to the NHM? Because Shell, the world’s third largest oil com­pa­ny, is also the new spon­sor of the its Wildlife Pho­tog­ra­ph­er of the Year exhi­bi­tion.

Could you join the cam­paign oppos­ing this spon­sor­ship, write to the Muse­um or lend images to our ‘Shell’s Wild Lie’ counter-exhi­bi­tion?

Despite attempts to ‘greenwash’ its rep­u­ta­tion via blan­ket adver­tis­ing and cul­tur­al spon­sor­ship, Shell is still heav­i­ly impli­cat­ed in pro­duc­ing ever-greater quan­ti­ties of the oil and gas that are desta­bil­is­ing our cli­mate to such an alarm­ing degree. Cli­mate change is set to wipe out mil­lions of plant and ani­mal species and to dev­as­tate the poor­est regions of the plan­et. Shell’s activ­i­ties also result in oil spills which are major caus­es of death and destruc­tion for many vari­eties of life. Its planned refin­ery and pipeline project in Coun­try Mayo, Ire­land, threat­ens a pris­tine ecosysys­tem, not to men­tion the homes and liveli­hoods of the inhab­i­tants. Last­ly, Shell is cur­rent­ly con­struct­ing a mas­sive devel­op­ment at Sakhalin Island in Rus­sia which is threat­en­ing the sur­vival of the West­ern Pacif­ic Grey Whale. For all these rea­sons, Shell should not be spon­sor­ing the Wildlife Pho­tog­ra­ph­er of the Year exhi­bi­tion. We call on the Nat­ur­al His­to­ry Muse­um to end its spon­sor­ship deal with Shell.

Tell NHM boss Michael Dixon direct­ly what you think of Shell (not to men­tion BP, which is a Muse­um part­ner):
(020) 7942 5000; m.dixon@nhm.ac.uk, cc’ing to feedback@nhm.ac.uk & us.

…and get more involved in the Art Not Oil campaign/exhibition via Lon­don Ris­ing Tide, tak­ing cre­ative direct action on the root caus­es of cli­mate chaos

london@risingtide.org.uk
http://www.londonrisingtide.org.uk