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Young people and scientists occupy new coal-sponsored Science Museum gallery, joined by broadcaster and wildlife campaigner Chris Packham

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April 12, 2024 by Extinction Rebellion

  • 30+ young people, scientists and supporters occupy Science Museum’s new climate gallery in protest over its sponsorship by coal-producing conglomerate Adani
  • Group announce plan to remain over weekend ahead of the opening to school groups next week
  • Naturalist Chris Packham says sponsorship deal is “beyond greenwash – it’s grotesque” and attends to support the protesters
  • Science Museum criticised over ties to conglomerate involved in manufacturing drones for the Israeli military amidst bombardment of Gaza and destructive coal mining operations in India and Australia opposed by Indigenous groups

This evening, more than 30 protesters led by young people from Youth Action for Climate Justice and members of Scientists for Extinction Rebellion have occupied the Science Museum’s new climate gallery, Energy Revolution, over its sponsorship by the coal giant and arms manufacturer, Adani. Naturalist and broadcaster Chris Packham joined the group as they began their protest, with scientists and young people now intending to remain in the museum over the weekend, with the first school visits to the gallery beginning on Monday.

Chris Packham, who famously claimed that peacefully breaking the law is the ethically responsible thing to do when it comes to protecting the planet, told the protesters: “For me science is the art of understanding truth and beauty and a lot of that beauty lies in the natural world. Science tells us that the fossil fuel industry is responsible for the accelerating destruction of our natural world. The Science Museum is a place to spark imagination, to provide answers but also to encourage us to ask questions. The question I’m asking today is a big one, “why on earth are we allowing a destructive industry to sponsor an educational exhibition whilst simultaneously setting fire to young peoples futures?” This is beyond greenwash – it’s grotesque. We urgently need an ‘Energy Revolution’ to steer us away from the course of planetary destruction on which we are heading. We need a rapid, just transition to renewables – that revolution means an end to coal, and starts with the young people and scientists occupying this space this evening. Science tells us the truth, and the truth is that we must change.”

Naturalist Chris Packham at the Science Museum occupation 12 April 2024. Image: Extinction Rebellion.
Naturalist Chris Packham at the Science Museum occupation 12 April 2024. Image: Extinction Rebellion.

The Energy Revolution gallery opened to the public just a few weeks ago amidst protest, with over 150 people taking part in a day of creative action. A few days earlier, guests arriving for the private VIP launch were greeted by protesters as they arrived, as well as the museum throwing a lavish dinner for the Adani Group’s billionaire chairman, Gautam Adani, with the Adani Group’s logo plastered on screens around the room. 

To coincide with today’s protest, activists have released a new video exposing the truth behind the misleading claims made by Gautam Adani during his speech at the opening of the gallery. While he discussed the energy transition from oil and gas, he neglected to mention coal, the industry from which the Adani Group derives 60% of its revenue. The Science Museum has attempted to defend its sponsorship deal by claiming it has only partnered with the Green Energy division, although evidence clearly shows that it is directly linked to Adani’s coal business and that the museum has maintained a relationship with the main Adani Group.

At 2pm on Saturday, the occupiers will invite members of the public to join them for an interactive assembly inside the gallery to discuss alternatives to toxic fossil fuel sponsorship at the Science Museum. The group plans to tell the public the truth about the gallery’s sponsor and the urgency of keeping fossil fuels in the ground for a liveable future. Throughout their occupation, the protesters are also constructing sculptures of fragments of coal as a poignant reminder of Adani’s core polluting business.

Since the announcement of Adani sponsorship of the gallery in 2021, the museum has faced a raft of opposition and protests, including the resignation of two trustees, and of former museum director Chris Rapley from the Advisory Board. The museum has also recently faced protests over Adani’s involvement in the ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza via its partnership with Israeli arms firm Elbit Systems.

Ian McDermott, a Chemistry teacher who will no longer organise school trips to the museum, has said: “For decades I ran a couple of trips to the museum a year, but I just don’t think it’s in the students’ interests to engage with the greenwashing of the companies destroying their futures.”

Protest placard reads Greenwash detected
Protest placard reads Greenwash detected

Adani is the world’s largest private developer of new coal mines and coal-fired power plants, including Australia’s largest, the Carmichael Coal Mine built on Wangan and Jagalingou ancestral land. This ongoing investment in coal mining and power flies in the face of the scientific warning that most fossil fuel reserves cannot be burned and emitted if global warming increase is limited to 1.5°C, or even 2°C above pre industrial levels.

Anya, a young person occupying the gallery said: “To have a coal company sponsoring an exhibition on the future of energy is blatantly deceiving. Through this sponsorship deal, the Science Museum is helping Adani attach itself to the image of a positive and sustainable future when in reality it is a coal giant, weapons manufacturer and genocide supporter. It’s plain wrong for the Science Museum to be deceiving visitors, including young people like me, when it comes to the climate crisis.”

This is not the only instance of the museum welcoming fossil fuel companies to sponsor and influence its science education programmes and galleries. The Museum’s STEM Training Academy, which aims to support teachers in delivering science education, is sponsored by oil and gas giant BP, while the Museum’s interactive children’s gallery is named after Norwegian oil and gas company, Equinor. 

Dr. Aaron Thierry, a scientist, who has researched climate impacts in the Arctic, is among those currently occupying the museum: “It’s not just Adani’s brand that the science museum is greenwashing, they’re also allowing the oil and gas giants BP and Equinor to sponsor their exhibits, disregarding the fact that these companies continue to expand fossil fuel production against the warnings of climate scientists. The latest science has shown we must leave the majority of fossil fuels unburned to prevent catastrophic changes to our climate. That an institution like the Science Museum is working with such rouge companies is a disgrace. The museum’s management needs to follow the example of Britain’s other leading cultural institutions and drop all ties to the fossil fuel industry.“

Scientists for Extinction Rebellion and Youth Action for Climate Justice (who have led this action) are members of Fossil Free Science Museum Coalition who are campaigning for the Science Museum to end its sponsorship by fossil fuel companies.

Youth Action for Climate Justice (formerly UKSCN London) is a radical youth organisation mobilising for climate justice. YACJ aims to create a new generation of young activists who are educated about society and the change we need, in order to work with other movements to change the system we live in. The group was previously part of Youth Strike for Climate Movement and coordinated the London youth climate strikes in 2019 and 2020, which brought thousands of young people to the streets of London. Instagram | Twitter

Scientists for Extinction Rebellion are scientists who agree with Extinction Rebellion that it is time to take direct action to confront catastrophic climate and ecological breakdown. Instagram | Twitter

Other groups involved are: International Solidarity for Academic Freedom in India (InSAF India), India Labour Solidarity (UK), Students for Survival; and numerous Extinction Rebellion groups.

Continue ReadingYoung people and scientists occupy new coal-sponsored Science Museum gallery, joined by broadcaster and wildlife campaigner Chris Packham

Abandoned pipelines could release poisons into North Sea, scientists warn

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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/feb/24/abandoned-oil-gas-pipelines-poison-pollution-risk-north-sea-scientists

Large volumes of mercury, radioactive lead and polonium-210 could be released into the sea if pipelines are left to decay. Photograph: Jane Barlow/PA

Decaying oil and gas pipelines left to fall apart in the North Sea could release large volumes of poisons such as mercury, radioactive lead and polonium-210, notorious for its part in the poisoning of Russian defector Alexander Litvinenko, scientists are warning.

Mercury, an extremely toxic element, occurs naturally in oil and gas. It sticks to the inside of pipelines and builds up over time, being released into the sea when the pipeline corrodes.

Some methylmercury, the most toxic form of the metal, is released by the pipelines although other forms can be converted into it. The international Minamata convention on mercury states that high levels in dolphins, whales and seals can lead to “reproductive failure, behavioural changes and even death”. Seabirds and large predatory fish such as tuna and swordfish are also particularly vulnerable.

Lhiam Paton, a researcher from the Institute for Analytical Chemistry at the University of Graz who has raised the alarm over the mercury pollution, told the Guardian and Watershed Investigations that “even a small increase in mercury levels in the sea will have a dramatic impact on the animals at the top of the food web”.

There are about 27,000km (16,800 miles) of gas pipelines in the North Sea, and scientists predict the amount of the metal in the sea could increase anywhere from 3% up to 160% from existing levels. In some countries, such as Australia, companies are required to remove them when the oil well stops operating. But in the North Sea companies are allowed to leave them to rot away.

…

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/feb/24/abandoned-oil-gas-pipelines-poison-pollution-risk-north-sea-scientists

Continue ReadingAbandoned pipelines could release poisons into North Sea, scientists warn

BP scales back climate goals as profits more than double to £23bn

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https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/feb/07/bp-profits-windfall-tax-gas-prices-ukraine-war

Just Stop Oil protests at BP
Just Stop Oil protests at BP

BP has scaled back its climate ambitions as it announced that annual profits more than doubled to $28bn (£23bn) in 2022 after a sharp increase in gas prices linked to the Ukraine war boosted its earnings.

In a move that will anger campaigners, the oil and gas giant cut its emissions pledge and plans a greater production of oil and gas over the next seven years compared with previous targets.

The huge annual profit led to renewed calls for a toughened windfall tax, as oil companies reap rewards from higher gas prices while many households and businesses struggle to cope with a sharp rise in energy bills.

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Kate Blagojevic, Greenpeace UK’s head of climate justice, said: “BP is yet another fossil fuel giant mining gold out of the vast suffering caused by the climate and energy crisis.

“What’s worse, their green plans seem to have been strongly undermined by pressure from investors and governments to make even more dirty money out of oil and gas. This is precisely why we need governments to intervene to change the rules.”

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https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/feb/07/bp-profits-windfall-tax-gas-prices-ukraine-war

Continue ReadingBP scales back climate goals as profits more than double to £23bn

How the Super-Rich Control the U.S. Government

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By Eric Zuesse

Global Research, November 06, 2022

The U.S. Government tries to hide how obscenely top-end the nation’s wealth-distribution is; but one remarkably clear presentation of it (the U.S. private-wealth distribution)  was the web-page from the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System that presented an “Overview” of “Distribution of Wealth” starting in “1989:Q3” and extending up till “2021:Q2”. (It will be presented even more clearly here, using their reported data.)

The following shows breakdowns of the wealth-quintiles — percentages of the wealth held by the nation’s households, all the way from the top fifth to the bottom fifth — in the “US$ Trillions” for each fifth — during the latter quarter (the “2021:Q2”), as is shown on that web-page:

  • Top 5th =Top 20% total $94.68T ($36.23T for top 1% + $58.45T for all of the next 19%)
  • 2nd 5th =Top 40%-Top 20%: $20.68T
  • 3rd 5th = Top 60%-Top 40%: $9.62T
  • 4th 5th = Top 80%-Top 60%: $5.41T
  • 5th 5th = Too 100%-Top 80%: $3.69T
  • 100% = $94.68T + $20.68T + $9.62T + $5.41T + $3.69T = $134.08T total.

Therefore: Top 20% = 70.6% of all wealth.

  • Top 40% = 86.0% of all wealth.
  • Top 60% = 93.2% of all wealth.
  • Top 80% = 97.2% of all wealth.
  • Top 100% = 100% of all wealth.
  • Additionally shown was the top 1%:
  • Top 1% (“99-100%”): $36.23T
  • Top 20% less that top 1%: $58.45T
  • So: the top 1% (the wealthiest 5% of the wealthiest 20%) held 38.3% of all the top fifth’s $94.68T.
  • Top 1% =  27% of all wealth.
  • (Bottom 1% wasn’t shown.)
  • Bottom 20% = 2.8% of all wealth.
  • Bottom 40% = 6.8%
  • Bottom 60% = 14.0%
  • Bottom 80% = 29.4%

Virtually all people who have the discretionary cash to be able to donate significantly to the politicians they favor are in the top fifth — the people who have 70.6% of all wealth. They dominate the nation’s political money. Almost all of the virtually bribes that fill political campaign-chests in America come from the richest 20% of Americans — and the top 1% contain all of the ‘king-makers.” And if you’re in the bottom 80% of wealth-holders in the U.S., you’re not represented, at all, in the U.S. Government.

The top 1% have vastly more, than rest of the top 20%, available to them to donate to their favored politicians, because these people — the top-one-percenters — hold the corporate board seats, and select the corporate executives who hire the congressional lobbyists to entertain and reward and hire the crucial congress-members so as to serve their corporations, and serve those top one-percenters who control all of those corporations. Included in these corporations are the ones that control all of the major, and most of the minor, news-media and that thereby shape the ‘knowledge’ and thus the views that most of the voters (in each Party) hold.

America has around a thousand billionaires, and they have control over so much discretionary cash as to be able to get Congress to not pass any bill that these super-rich oppose, and to pass many of the legislative bills that those super-rich want to become law. So, almost all of the thousand-or-so individuals who control the U.S. Government are billionaires. They especially control international corporations. Those few people dominate both Parties.

But they do it very much behind-the-scenes. In previous centuries, aristocrats were publicly known, by formal titles; but in today’s ‘democracies’, they are, instead, as hidden as they can be. They don’t want the public to know that the Government represents only them, because, otherwise, the Government’s saying that this or that foreign ‘dictatorship’ that poses no real threat to the national security of one’s own country, should be regime-changed, would have the citizens wonder, instead, “Isn’t it our nation’s regime that should be regime-changed first?” Any look at the ‘news’-media will make clear that they DON’T want THAT question to be in anybody’s mind. The message is instead always to regime-change the foreign leaders whom one’s own nation’s billionaires WANT to be regime-changed. That’s the way to get the public to be willing to fund (via their own taxes) the ‘Defense’ Department. Isn’t it un-‘patriotic’ to want to slash the spending on ‘defense’? Where did THAT idea come from?

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This article was originally published on The Duran.

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s new book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

The original source of this article is Global Research

Copyright © Eric Zuesse, Global Research, 2022

Continue ReadingHow the Super-Rich Control the U.S. Government

I would remind you that …

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Chilcot is expected to announce a timetable soon.

I would remind you that

1. It is under the Inquires Act 2005 i.e. the government is decisive and in charge of everything. The government is in charge of everything.

2. I’ll get back to you

later ed: The I[E]nquires Act 2005 did away with anything near a public inquiry one month before 7 July 2005 which was then described as …

oh what was it now? a …

something diversion?

that would be a something diversion from

the official narrative …

an unnecessary investigation …

that …

didn’t

with the government version of Blair and Campbell & Co

…

which we know is so robust

and beyond any, any doubt

The official narrative is beyond reproach.

signed
Blair, Blair, Blunkett, Reid, Campbell & Co.

We did fuck up that the train they were on didn’t exist that day. But you’ve still got to believe us because we’re not lying, honest.

Would I lie to you?
Tony Blair

That’s it – a Ludicrous Diversion

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4454FA415EE50059

a … Ludicrous Diversion. An investigation would be ” a ludicrous diversion” …

ed: References to Tony Blair calling an investigation into the London bombings of 7 July 2005 “a ludicrous diversion” are disappearing.

ed: And I hate starting a sentence with and …

27/10/15 Re: Iraq War, Cameron and the Chilcot Inquiry

http://dissidentvoice.org/2015/10/tony-blair-is-the-legal-net-tightening/

…

Sir Jeremy was Principal Private Secretary to Tony Blair from June 1999 to July 2003 and would thus have been party to every step of the scheming and untruths about the invasion and surely the plotting between Bush and Blair to attack, during their April 2002, three day meeting at the Bush ranch in Crawford, Texas.

Subsequently Heywood stepped into the same position when Gordon Brown became Prime Minister after Blair’s resignation, a post he held between January 2008 and May 2010, so would also have been party to the plans for, and structure of, the Chilcot Inquiry into the war, which was set up by Brown. Thus those involved in the bloodbath and invasion, convened the Inquiry into the illegality.

Gordon Brown, as Blair’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, wrote the cheques for the years of illegal UK bombings of Iraq and for the UK’s participation in “Operation Iraqi Liberation” (OIL.) He also wrote the cheques for Britain’s part in the disastrous invasion of Afghanistan.

According to Ministry of Defence figures, the total cost of UK military operation in Iraq, 2003-2009, was £8.4 Billion – ongoing since they are back bombing, with Special Forces in Northern Iraq – and it would be unsurprising if also elsewhere in the country, given Britain’s duplicitous track record. To 2013 the cost of UK operations in Afghanistan reached £37 Billion, also ongoing.

David Cameron, who voted to attack Iraq, told a news programme at the time: “You’ve got to do what you think right, even if it’s unpopular …”, near mirroring Blair’s “I know I’m right” of the same time. Cameron admires Blair, regarding him as a “mentor.” At every level of government past and present, there are vested interests in the truth on Iraq never coming out.

…

Continue ReadingI would remind you that …