Rishi Sunak’s 5p per litre reduction on the price of filling up your car will hardly put a dent in the cost of living crisis, while fuelling the destruction of our only home and leaving millions of ordinary people still at the mercy of profiteering oil and gas companies.
It’s almost comically simple – burn stuff, heat the planet and lose all you love. Our addiction to oil and gas is fuelling wars and leaving us all at the mercy of dictators. Every drop of oil we burn is fuelling climate breakdown which means more and hotter heatwaves, more drought, more starvation, more war and more death.Young people know this and they are rightly terrified, it’s their future going up in smoke.
Yet our government wants to burn more of it? The UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres has described the rush to find new sources of fossil fuels because of the war in Ukraine as “madness” and “mutually assured destruction” and he is right. Drilling for new oil and gas will endanger our national security and destroy everything we love, and a government that ignores that threat is treasonous.
The government needs to get a grip. We need to stop new oil and gas, stop the fossil fuel tax breaks and subsidies and stop spending billions on new roads. The quickest and cheapest way to reduce energy bills for the 15 million who will plunge into fuel poverty on April 1st is to reduce demand for fossil fuels through energy saving measures like insulation, renewables and free public transport. A windfall tax on energy companies could help to pay for all of this – even former oil executives think that would be justified.
Just Stop Oil is bringing together groups who are mad as hell that in 2022 the Government is encouraging the extraction of more oil. We are calling on ordinary people to join thousands in mass civil resistance in April. Our demand is simple: the Government must get a grip and stop new oil and gas now. Just Stop Oil, it’s a no-brainer.
Insulate Britain created a national conversation around what we need to do to get on with the job of decarbonising Britain. After four weeks of civil disobedience 72% of the UK population* supported Insulate Britain’s demand to insulate UK homes. Insulate Britain was 174 people over 7 weeks. Think what 1000 or more people will achieve…!
Hundreds of meetings are happening now and actions aimed at highlighting the campaign are taking place (the BAFTAs and the football Premier League). This is how we are going to win – by people putting aside their differences and working together with a single achievable goal. And when we win, we know we will galvanise thousands of people into action.
We need to face the facts and do what is needed. Don’t be a bystander – attend one of our online or in-person talks to join us in resistance. It’s together that we can win this – so let’s get on with it!
