My day with Just Stop Oil
I travelled to London on Monday to protest with Just Stop Oil (JSO). It was supposed to be the last day of their month of October actions and so it was my last opportunity to participate and show solidarity with them. I didn’t know at the time that JSO activists had targeted MI5, Bank of England and News Corp that day. They then had a 32nd day of action on the first of November that targeted Downing Street. I had wanted to join them from the start of October but simply wasn’t able to for weeks because of commitments involving an elderly person needing support.
I arrived at about 11.30, half an hour later than JSO’s meeting time. I was very pleased to find them near the Department of Defence opposite Downing Street. I was worried that I might not find them and would be wasting hours wandering around London until I could catch my booked coach back.
There were about 35 of us from all over the UK. Ages were from late teens and I would say about 70% like me fifty or over, some able to be there because they were retired and still fit. There were about three wearing Christian dog-collars. I recognised one from an image of him used on this blog before.
I’m going to end this quickly because I’m suffering from a temporary health condition (Baker’s cysts) that causes a lot of pain. My reasoning is affected because of the pain and the painkillers that I’m taking.
JSO activists have no choice but to cause disruption. The climate crisis is a huge, real and immediate crisis.
JSO are very concerned with the safety of their participants. Marches are stewarded very well.
There is a choice to get arrested or not. JSO know the boundaries, how far they can push it until they are arrested. I was marching in the area around Parliament. Although there were arrests, those arrested were willing to be arrested.
Leafleting for JSO is challenging because you meet people who have a go at you.
JSO were not keen on letting me have the megaphone because they didn’t know me and didn’t know what I was going to say in the presence of many police officers.
There is a policy of getting out of the way of emergency vehicles despite what Mayor of London Sadiq Khan and others claim.
The painting is undamaged because it was behind glass.
ed: Just Stop Oil’s demand is no NEW oil or gas.
Fossil fools: Why governments are not addressing the climate crisis :: DRAFT subject to revision Revision 7
[3/11/22 I’m suffering from a temporary health condition [4/11/22: Baker’s cysts] which is very painful. I’m not thinking straight and find myself shouting at people on the radio, etc because of the pain. I may have lost my way with this and it’s probably best that I leave it for a while.]
This is the article the earlier Coming soon relates to. It is getting revised and elaborated. This is my understanding and judgement. I am not claiming that it is wholly correct but it is approaching it.
Every adult has a responsibility to future generations. Current governments are woefully failing that responsibility through neglecting to address the climate crisis. There are many reasons for this which I am trying to identify in this article.
Public (private) education
Privately-funded education in UK is incorrectly called public education so that you have public schools which are actually private fee-paying schools that rich people send their children to. It is generally a high standard of education, far higher than the real pubic free schooling system provided by the government and financed through taxation.
In addition to academic achievements public school students are taught how to rule, to be in charge. Many UK politicians – particularly Conservative or ‘Tory’ politicians – are privately educated with some attending the elite Eton public school before progressing to study PPE (Politics, Philosophy and Economics) at the highly regarded Oxford University. By contrast I was educated at many different state-run schools, left school having completed O-levels at 16 and later achieved a BSc at a polytechnic and later again a MSc at the same polytechnic which by then had converted to a post-polytechnic university. I am quite capable in different ways through my experiences and despite receiving a less than first-class educational experience.
Three aspects of the education that public school students receive in addition to the academic education – often called the ‘hidden curriculum’ – are (i) that they should be concerned only with their own welfare, (ii) that they should trust and act on their intuition disregarding and regardless of evidence to the contrary, and (iii) that they will never be held to account for their actions. These three taught aspects have awful consequences for the World since they lead to neglecting to address the climate crisis.
There is a phrase “A gentleman never lies”. What this means is that public schoolboys are never accused of lying. They do lie of course – look at Tony ‘Bliar’ Blair and Boris Johnson. Lying was Boris Johnson’s first instinct – you would be nearer the truth by believing the exact opposite of anything he said. I was out drinking and fraternising locally and this posh public schoolboy student was taking the piss out of me. He was probably a student of law or something similar. So he’s repeating to me “I’m not taking the piss out of you.” as he was taking the piss out of my beauty mark, being hugely personally insulting. So I’m repeating back “That’s exactly what you’re doing.” It’s impolite to accuse somebody of lying of course but he was a total cnut trying to invoke personal stigma not understanding the accusation of being a liar because he had never experienced that.
These posh boys are also never contradicted so that they exist in some parallel universe. Blair may well have believed in weapons of mass destruction because he had poor abilities judgement abilities. The richer they are the more detatched from reality they are. People suck up to them. You never discuss prices with these posh boys because money is not an issue for them, they’re rolling in it.
These are the people in charge, really nasty people who don’t care about anyone else, appear concerned only with the immediate, don’t seem to take anything seriously and enjoy humiliating plebs like me. I can’t say that they’re all like that of course but that’s how they’ve been moulded so it would be difficult for them to not be. So, back to the main issue here: Why governments are not addressing the climate crisis. These are the people in charge who control governments. These are the people with superyachts, the people who fly around the World in private jets who just don’t care about anyone or anything except themselves. It might be fairer to say that it is the elite of this elite that is the problem, the 1% of the 1% who depend on big oil and gas to keep them rich and powerful. What sort of cnut do you have to be to take part in space tourism?
Elite education may have been appropriate in the era of Empire but is totally inappropriate now. Elite establishments should use their lead to teach compassion, co-operation and respect for all. I appreciate that state school teachers are constrained in how they can behave and what they can teach. School students should not be bullied for being poor, independent or free-thinking as was my experience. State school teachers and lecturers need to respect students’ human rights, help young people develop their potential and encourage participation in the democratic process.
The very concept of childhood is relatively recent and even today doesn’t exist in much of the World. Children are not educated and through poverty are forced to work in much of the World.
I started this article by stating that every adult has a responsibility to future generations. Privately educated Rish! Sunak has more of a responsibility than all other UK adults since he is UK prime minister. However, by chosing to neglect the climate crisis and by actually accelerating climate destruction he is even neglecting his responsibility to his own two daughters.
Climate activists are challenged while climate destroyers are not. Where are the questions Why are you destroying the planet? You’re promoting space tourism that causes … why are you doing that? Do you realise that this superyacht causes … ?
- Fossil Fuels
- The fossil fuel industry has deliberately developed contemporary societies to be hugely dependent on oil and gas. UK is an oil-dependent society rather than an industrial or any other society.
- Politicians are so close to the fossil fuel industry that it is difficult to distinguish them.
- There is a lack of imagination, politicians and others cannot imagine anything other than oil-dependency. There are alternative, renewable sources of energy that are cleaner and cheaper and do not cause climate destruction.
Greenpeace to Rishi Sunak: Tax Fossil Fuel Profits and Lower Energy Bills Now
[The situation on fracking has changed since this article was published 3 days ago. The new UK government under Rishi Sunak has made clear that fracking is not permitted in UK.] Republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons licence (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
“Delay has cost lives. Chaos costs lives. And it will cost more lives this winter and every winter,” campaigners say. “No one benefits except the oil and gas profiteers.”
KENNY STANCILOctober 24, 2022
Hours after lawmakers from the ruling Conservative Party voted to make Rishi Sunak the United Kingdom’s third prime minister this year, more than 30 climate and energy justice activists occupied the lobby of Parliament to demand that the government fund home insulation and renewable power generation through a more robust tax on oil and gas corporations’ windfall profits.
Almost seven million people in the U.K.—nearly a quarter of the country’s population—are facing fuel poverty as winter quickly approaches. Meanwhile, heavily subsidized fossil fuel giants are raking in record profits, which they use to block policies that would facilitate a green transition and rein in their destructive industry.
Greenpeace campaigners, armed with sky-high utility bills from across the country, read the testimonies of people struggling to make ends meet amid a historic cost-of-living crisis that Sunak’s right-wing predecessors—Boris Johnson and Liz Truss—and Tory colleagues have, according to progressive critics, exacerbated through adherence to neoliberal orthodoxy.
Stressing that “chaos costs lives,” activists made the case for simultaneously addressing soaring energy prices and the worsening climate emergency by taxing fossil fuel profits and using the revenue to invest in better residential insulation and expanded clean energy production.
“Thanks to spiraling gas prices and the oldest, coldest housing in Europe, millions of people are being pushed into fuel poverty,” Greenpeace U.K. noted in a blog post. “People across the country have waited for government after government to provide enough help to lower their energy bills—but mostly what we’ve had is political chaos.”
The group continued:
Rising energy bills and cold homes will cost lives. The U.K. already has the sixth highest rate of excess winter deaths in Europe. Higher bills also disproportionately impact disabled and older people, people of color, and those from impoverished communities. For instance, many medical and mobility devices require electricity. Meaning, on average, disabled people have much higher energy bills just for using equipment they need in their day-to-day lives. Political leaders have failed to put people first and provide sufficient support for the energy crisis.
It’s political choices that have caused the levels of inequality and fuel poverty we’re facing. If this government properly taxed record fossil fuel profits, it could help fund extra support for those in need, and help pay for a nationwide program to insulate homes. Instead, the last six weeks have seen u-turns on the Conservative manifesto pledge on fracking and new commitments to North Sea oil and gas, which will wreck our climate and won’t lower our bills.
Two months ago, the U.K. Treasury estimated that the nation’s energy firms are poised to enjoy up to £170 billion ($191.9 billion) in excess profits—defined as the gap between money made now and what would have been expected based on price forecasts prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine—over the next two years.
A 25% windfall tax on oil and gas producers approved in July is expected to raise £5 billion ($5.6 billion) in its first year. However, the existing surtax on excess fossil fuel profits contains loopholes allowing companies to drastically reduce their tax bill by investing more in oil and gas extraction, which the industry claims will boost supply. The recently enacted windfall tax, which lasts through 2025, also exempts eletricity generators, even though Treasury officials attribute roughly two-fifths of the £170 billion in excess profits to such actors.
With winter energy bills projected to triple compared with last year, calls are growing in the U.K. to increase the windfall tax rate on excess fossil fuel profits and extend it to electricity generators benefiting from rising oil and gas prices.
While Truss vehemently opposed windfall taxes—asserting that they “send the wrong message to investors”—Sunak introduced the current windfall tax in May when he was Johnson’s chancellor of the exchequer.
According to Greenpeace, Monday’s action was meant to show Sunak that “he can’t ignore the almost seven million households facing fuel poverty.”
The life-threatening crises of surging utility bills and unmitigated greenhouse gas pollution are both caused by fossil fuel dependence, the group noted. Consequently, these problems have lifesaving solutions that are straightforward and aligned.
“To lower our bills long-term and reduce our emissions,” Greenpeace urged Sunak to do the following:
- Commit to investing £6 billion [$6.8 billion] immediately to kickstart a street-by-street insulation program to keep bills low for good;
- Shift to renewable energy, like wind and solar, which are cheaper and quicker to build than oil and gas; and
- Properly tax oil and gas companies’ excess profits so they pay their fair share, given how much money they’ve made off these crises.
“It’s time we have a government that brings down bills for good and plays its part in tackling the climate crisis,” the group added.
On social media, Greenpeace encouraged people to sign a petition imploring U.K. lawmakers to “keep people warm this winer.”
“Delay has cost lives. Chaos costs lives. And it will cost more lives this winter and every winter,” the group emphasized. “No one benefits except the oil and gas profiteers. If the government were on the people’s side, the U.K. really could get on track to quitting oil, gas, and sky-high energy bills, forever.”
Republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons licence (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).