Fossil Fools Day round-up

In the UK —

BP ad cam­paign hoax kicks off the Fort­night of Shame

BP today had to halt the launch of a mul­ti-mil­lion pound ‘Back to Black’ ad cam­paign. That’s right, BP’s award-win­ning ‘beyond petro­le­um’ brand took a hit today when a, pre­vi­ous­ly unknown, PR agency deliv­ered 22,000 revamped BP logos and a new sign to the company’s head­quar­ters in St. James’ Square.The ad agency mis­in­ter­pret­ed the brief to come up with a new logo that took account of BP’s deci­sion to invest in the Cana­di­an tar sands, and launched the mul­ti-mil­lion pound ‘Back to Black’ cam­paign.

… What day is it? April Fools Day, a day for pranks both sil­ly and seri­ous.
So here’s what real­ly hap­pened:

Pos­ing as rep­re­sen­ta­tives of a PR com­pa­ny, cli­mate cam­paign­ers played a Fos­sil Fools Day prank on BP today by deliv­er­ing 22,000 new logos – one for every BP logo in the UK – to the company’s HQ.

The cam­paign­ers, from Lon­don Ris­ing Tide and the UK Tar Sands Net­work, piled box­es of ‘Back to Black’ logos on BP’s doorstep and d‑locked a match­ing sign onto the build­ing in protest at the company’s rever­sal of its deci­sion to stay out of Canada’s con­tro­ver­sial tar sands.

BP’s ‘beyond petro­le­um’ brand was nev­er more than a slick cha­rade and BP’s plans to move into the tar sands reveal the company’s true colours. We vis­it­ed BP today to present a logo that’s more fit­ting for a com­pa­ny about to invest in the most destruc­tive project on the plan­et.

Today marks the start of the BP Tar Sans Fort­night of Shame, which will see actions tak­ing place up and down the coun­try, all with a com­mon mes­sage. Extrac­tion in the Cana­di­an tar sands is fuelling cli­mate chaos and tram­pling indige­nous rights, and we won’t let BP go into the tar sands with­out a fight.

If you want to get involved then come along to the BP Tar Sands: Par­ty at the Pumps on Sat­ur­day 10th April, meet 1pm, Oxford Cir­cus – more info at: www.risingtide.org.uk

tarsandsinfocus@googlemail.com
http://www.tarsandsinfocus.wordpress.com

Video

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Ris­ing Tide dis­rupt Shell in Bris­tol

Activists from Bris­tol and Bath Ris­ing Tide vis­it­ed the Shell garage in Muller Road, East­ville at 8.30am yes­ter­day to high­light the repres­sion expe­ri­enced by com­mu­ni­ties in Coun­ty Mayo, Ire­land who are try­ing to stop Shell build­ing an onshore high pres­sure pipeline and gas refin­ery.

The com­mu­ni­ty in Erris, Coun­ty Mayo has seen con­tin­ued harass­ment and intim­i­da­tion by Gar­dai and Shell secu­ri­ty, as well as the unlaw­ful arrest and tar­get­ed jail­ing of key cam­paign­ers. In Feb­ru­ary fish­er­man Pat O’Don­nell was sen­tenced to 7 months in jail for con­vic­tions of “breach of the peace” and of “obstruct­ing a Gar­da”. The com­mu­ni­ty has been fight­ing this project for over a decade. Con­struc­tion of the gas refin­ery has result­ed in the pol­lu­tion of the local drink­ing water. Untreat­ed waste chem­i­cals from the refin­ery, includ­ing lead, mer­cury, arsenic and radon would be pumped into Broad­haven Bay despite it being a des­ig­nat­ed Spe­cial Area of Con­ser­va­tion. 1

The action was part of Fos­sil Fools Day, a glob­al day of cre­ative action against cor­po­ra­tions who con­tribute to and prof­it from cli­mate change. 2

Rachel Keevil from Ris­ing Tide, chas­ing anoth­er activist with a large sec­tion of pipe, said “Shell are cli­mate crim­i­nals. The gas pipeline in Coun­ty Mayo will dam­age the envi­ron­ment and threat­en the health and liveli­hoods of local peo­ple; all for the prof­it of Shell. It’s a pipeline to dis­as­ter.”

This street the­atre was clear­ly a ridicu­lous rep­re­sen­ta­tion of very seri­ous events but opened up a space for talk­ing with the pub­lic about the issues, many of whom took gen­uine inter­est, some say­ing they were inspired to write to Pat in prison.

Notes
1 http://www.shelltosea.com/node/21
2 http://risingtide.org.uk/node/336

Bris­tol and Bath Ris­ing Tide
bristol@risingtide.org.uk
http://risingtide.org.uk/bristol

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Eon switch on to com­mu­ni­ty renew­ables

PRESS RELEASE 01-04-2010

GREEN ENERGY GIFT FOR MEDWAY

Ger­man ener­gy giant EON have announced that they are shelv­ing con­tro­ver­sial plans for a mas­sive expan­sion of coal and gas
elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­a­tion in the Med­way region. The sur­pris­ing news emerged today as Eon con­trac­tors broke ground at the offices of Med­way Coun­cil on Dock Road, Chatham, and start­ed installing wind tur­bines and solar pan­els.

Eon media rela­tions offi­cer, Joe King announced, “We realise that con­tin­ued invest­ment in fos­sil fuels is a dan­ger­ous dis­trac­tion from the urgent need to devel­op tru­ly sus­tain­able tech­nolo­gies so we’ve aban­doned our dat­ed plans to con­tin­ue burn­ing gas and coal. This wind farm for Med­way coun­cil is just the begin­ning, we’re also offer­ing all our cus­tomers heav­i­ly dis­count­ed shares in future com­mu­ni­ty wind farm schemes, so they’ll actu­al­ly co-own the sys­tems that pro­vide their pow­er”.

In a leaflet passed out to passers by, Eon admit­ted that until now, only a triv­ial amount of their invest­ments had gone into renew­ables but promised that would now change. Acknowl­edg­ing the urgent need to dras­ti­cal­ly cut emis­sions in order to curb glob­al warm­ing and avoid dis­as­trous cli­mat­ic tip­ping points, the com­pa­ny promised they’d aban­don their plans to turn Med­way into a CO2 pump­ing hub, end fur­ther invest­ment into fos­sil fuels, and instead com­mit to tru­ly sus­tain­able ener­gy such as wind and sun.

How­ev­er, a local activist Ben­nie Fac­tor, expressed dis­be­lieve, “This is a joke! All this renew­able ener­gy rhetoric rep­re­sent noth­ing more than cycli­cal green­wash from these ener­gy giants. Sad­ly, the real­i­ty is that they are still com­mit­ted to busi­ness as usu­al, damn­ing us all to con­tin­ued green­house gas emis­sions and cat­a­stroph­ic cli­mate change.”

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The FOSSIL FOOLS FARCE … is here!

Ris­ing Tide-Ply­mouth & Art Not Oil-Ply­mouth took the Ply­mouth city cen­tre streets to bring you the big “Fos­sil Fools Farce”, to remind us there are facts and names behind the Cli­mate dra­ma.

Today, on “Fos­sil Fools Day”, we bring you:

*The BIG OIL evil clown – Oil indus­try is the respon­si­bil­i­ty of the ‘tax­pay­er sup­port­ed’ glob­al expan­sion into the far reach­es of the plan­et. Unless fur­ther explo­ration to find and exploit more oil and oth­er fos­sil fuels is stopped, and instead accel­er­ate the trans­fer of invest­ment into renew­able ener­gy, the planet’s cli­mate will not be able to with­stand. Apart of mas­sive CO2 emis­sions, the oil indus­try has been respon­si­ble for mas­sive scale defor­esta­tion, local mor­tal dis­eases in oil field areas, eco­log­i­cal dis­as­ters, over­rid­ing indige­nous rights and more human rights vio­la­tions. All in the name of their prof­it.

Cur­rent­ly BP & Shell are invest­ing in the trag­ic TAR SANDS project in Cana­da, which is the dirt­i­est and most expen­sive oil in terms of extrac­tion and emis­sions that will lead us inevitably to run­away Cli­mate Chaos ‑at a time when glob­al oil resources are run­ning out!

*The Crazy AVIATOR – In terms of dam­age to the cli­mate, fly­ing is ten times worse than tak­ing the train. It’s respon­si­ble for 13% of the UK’s impact on the cli­mate and it’s the fastest grow­ing source of emis­sions in this coun­try; between 1990 and 2050, emis­sions from avi­a­tion are set to quadru­ple, which sci­en­tists say could wipe out all oth­er emis­sions sav­ings we make in every oth­er sec­tor! The main cause of this mas­sive growth in the UK is the pro­lif­er­a­tion of short haul routes — often unnec­es­sary domes­tic ones.

In Ply­mouth we have Air South West ( owned by Sut­ton Har­bour group — who also man­age Ply­mouth air­port!) pub­li­cis­ing aggres­sive­ly domes­tic flights between Ply­mouth-Lon­don and Newquay. Their ‘cheap’ price offers don’t tell you what we’ll all have to pay after­wards — the REAL price behind it: a plan­et that will nev­er stop warm­ing up. Besides, trains to Corn­wall aren’t expen­sive! – and it’s a great land­scape.

Fos­sil fuels are the main source of Green­house Gas emis­sions. How­ev­er last Decem­ber in Copen­hagen the politi­cians sold us out to the fos­sil­fools, cor­po­rate lob­by­ists and big banks. Now we’re left with “green cap­i­tal­ism,” a deeply unjust car­bon mar­ket and con­tin­ued assaults on our com­mu­ni­ties and ecosys­tems.

The stakes couldn’t be high­er: desta­bil­i­sa­tion of the glob­al cli­mate, local com­mu­ni­ties destroyed by dirty ener­gy extrac­tion and com­bus­tion, dev­as­tat­ing freak storms, droughts, floods, the list goes on …

If we’re going to stop cli­mate chaos, the only real solu­tion is to keep fos­sil fuels in the ground.

Join the pos­i­tive char­ac­ters of this dra­ma and change the script of our future!

Join the inspir­ing WIND FAIRY, play­ing and trust­ing clean ener­gy; the com­mit­ted CYCLIST, who claims the future with ped­al pow­er! and
the down to earth PERMACULTURE, who respects the land, grows their own food and sows the seeds into our chance to be healthy and eco­nom­i­cal­ly inde­pen­dent com­mu­ni­ties!

We can be the prob­lem ..or the solu­tion. That is our stance today.

NOTES:

-Join ‘Tran­si­tion-Ply­mouth’ grass­roots local ini­tia­tive for a sus­tain­able Ply­mouth!
Email: plymouthtransition@nature-mail.com or phone: 01752 222152

- Get the facts on Tar Sands: http://www.tarsandswatch.org/

- Stop sup­port­ing uneth­i­cal fos­sil banks like RBS & Bar­clay’s. Switch your­self to an eth­i­cal one: the Co-oper­a­tive or Tri­o­dos, or see:
http://www.vegansociety.com/Lifestyle-And-Nutrition/Finance/Ethical-Banking.aspx

- More alter­na­tives: http://risingtide.org.uk/resources/positivesolutions

Ris­ing Tide-Ply­mouth takes cre­ative non-vio­lent direct action and pro­vides pop­u­lar edu­ca­tion to con­front the root caus­es of Cli­mate
Change.

www.risingtide.org.uk
www.artnotoil.org.uk

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Brighton — RBS out of order over Tar Sands

Roy­al Bank of Scot­land cash­points have fall­en prey to an April fools prank in protest at RBS’s invest­ments in Cana­di­an tar sands. The cash­points were dis­abled by local activist group Brighton Against Tar Sands (BATS) with signs which read ‘Invest­ing in tar sands is OUT OF ORDER’. The signs were fixed to half a dozen cash­points in Brighton and Lewes in the ear­ly hours of Thurs­day (1st April) morn­ing.

The prac­ti­cal joke had a seri­ous mes­sage. Tar sands oil extrac­tion in Alber­ta, Cana­da is the sin­gle largest indus­tri­al CO2 emit­ter on the plan­et and has been respon­si­ble for destroy­ing an area of ancient for­est the size of Eng­land.

It is also home to First Nation tribes who have lived off the land for mil­len­nia. Due to the pol­lu­tion they now have high rates of can­cer and are los­ing their ancient hunt­ing grounds.

BATS spokesper­son Dan Stars said: “RBS is out of order. Tar sands is like­ly to be respon­si­ble for run­away cli­mate change if the exploita­tion con­tin­ues unchecked. It is whol­ly irre­spon­si­ble for the bank to invest in what amounts to tar­maged­don.”
http://http://www.flickr.com/photos/wdm/4327600119

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Back in the USA —

Col­orado activists pulled an elab­o­rate prank on Xcel Ener­gy today, April Fool’s Day, announc­ing that the util­i­ty com­pa­ny pledged to switch to 100 per­cent renew­able elec­tric­i­ty statewide by phas­ing out not just coal plants, but nat­ur­al gas as well. More

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Pro­test­ers boast­ing signs that read “Break America’s Oil Addic­tion” and “Coal is Dirty” crowd around Bank of Amer­i­ca in down­town Asheville shout­ing and chant­i­ng slo­gans like: “What do we want? No Coal! When do we want it? NOW.” More

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An activist was arrest­ed this after­noon at the Water­loo Branch of RBC Bank. Mark Cor­biere was charged with mis­chief for hang­ing a ban­ner read­ing “Boy­cott RBC” and “Stop the Tar Sands” from the roof of the branch, locat­ed in uptown Water­loo. More
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Pep­co announces plan to shift all pow­er facil­i­ties to wind and solar ener­gy, may can­cel planned rate hikes Pep­co noti­fies its cus­tomers that it wish­es “to serve the ener­gy needs of our cus­tomers for gen­er­a­tions to come — Wash­ing­ton DC. More

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Late last night vol­un­teers with Port­land Ris­ing Tide blast­ed the city with over 3,000 fake news­pa­per cov­ers wrap­ping the Willamette Week. With con­tent includ­ing an inter­view with Big­foot about pipeline plans. More

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Philadel­phia envi­ron­men­tal­ists told morn­ing com­muters not to be “fos­sil fooled” by PNC Bank – a bank that calls itself “A Green Bank with Eco-Friend­ly Ser­vice”. PNC Bank has direct and indi­rect con­nec­tions to moun­tain­top removal coal min­ing. More

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Blame Cana­da

In the spir­it of April Fools day, 13 Cities in Cana­da have pulled cre­ative pranks on fos­sil fuel indus­try sup­port­ers, or “Fos­sil Fools,” pleas­ant­ly con­fus­ing secu­ri­ty guards, police, and the gen­er­al pub­lic. More

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It’s not Down Under — New Zealand/

Camp for Cli­mate Action Auck­land has vis­it­ed the offices of OMFi­nan­cial to present them with this year’s Fos­sil Fools day award for help­ing New Zealand’s biggest pol­luters cheat their way out of deal­ing with cli­mate change. More

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Beware what hap­pens in The Nether­lands

Shell Apol­o­gis­es for Human Rights Vio­la­tions in Niger Delta, The Hague. More

Fos­sil Fools Day 2010