Two young supporters of Just Stop Oil will deliver a letter to 10 Downing Street this morning. Nathan McGovern, 22, from Coventry and Claudia Penna Rojas, 24, student, from Latin America will read out the letter to the Prime Minister, together with the following statement from Just Stop Oil.
The letter will announce that the Just Stop Oil coalition has taken the decision to suspend activities until 25 April, to give the Prime Minister the opportunity to make a statement on behalf of the Government that it will immediately halt all future licensing and consents for the exploration, development and production of fossil fuels in the UK. [1]
A statement from Just Stop Oil
There are times when faced with a grave injustice or a harmful government, citizens have a right, a duty to break laws to prevent a greater crime being committed. And we can see that harm happening, right now, across the world and in the nations least responsible for the climate crisis.
We know that the course being charted by our government, by many governments, that of continuing to invest in new fossil fuels, has only one outcome, the mass loss of life and unimaginable horror visited on those who survive.
That this has not been well or widely communicated does not make it any less true, if you drop a glass it falls, if you burn carbon you heat the planet, if you destroy nature you lose the basic building blocks for life to flourish.
Right now, in 2022, those of us alive are witnessing the greatest crime ever committed, that of destroying the ‘liveable planet’ for profit. The scale and recklessness of this endeavor is hard to fathom. Scientist after scientist, report after report has concluded that we must escape the grip of oil, and the first step to finding our way is to stop new oil and gas.
It really is that simple, burn shit, heat the planet, lose all you love. So let’s Just Stop Oil.
That’s why across the globe, people are now engaging in civil resistance. That is why five Just Stop Oil supporters are currently on remand in prison. The era of protest, marches and petitions is drawing to a close – either we put our bodies in the way of the machine or we accept the loss of our only home.
ENDS
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Email: [email protected]
High quality photos and video footage available here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Dgcuv5vJjzfdSrdpX6HJEaayoidc08xy?usp=sharing
Website: https://juststopoil.org/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JustStopOil/
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Twitter: https://twitter.com/JustStop_Oil
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-t4U1Azf8AOkCBJILSNBmw
Notes to Editors
[1] Full text of letter from Just Stop Oil coalition to the Prime Minister
19 April 2022
Dear Prime Minister
The actions taken since 1st April by the Just Stop Oil coalition, and recent polling, have demonstrated that the vast majority of the country back the coalition demand that there should be no new oil and gas. It is supported by scientists, academics, your own Climate Change Committee and the International Energy Agency.
It is also supported by Antonio Guterres, the UN Secretary General, who on 4th April, in launching the latest IPCC report, denounced those countries who continue to invest in new fossil fuel supply projects as “dangerous radicals”. Just three days later your Government published a new energy strategy that does exactly that: committing to maximising the production of North Sea oil and gas. That you have done so while the UK is still President of the COP process, has destroyed your credibility and is marching the world to catastrophe.
Your Government has admitted this will do nothing to help ordinary people pay their bills. The policies that would help people now – support for home insulation and onshore wind – have been axed. While ordinary people struggle with the cost of living crisis driven by high oil and gas prices, the profits and the share price of BP and Shell continue to rise.
The bill for oil and gas is already being paid by millions around the world, in the Global South, and can now also be seen in blood and suffering in Ukraine. The truth is that this is the price we are all going to pay for allowing the grip of oil to continue its hold on us. This cost, the horror of war in Europe, must not be used as a pretext to advance an even greater tragedy – that of continuing to invest in new fossil fuel extraction, for which there is no popular support.
We cannot allow our democracy to be subverted in this way. No one voted for more oil and gas, no one voted to burn their future, no one voted to lose our ‘liveable planet’ and the horror that this will bring. You know that increasing the production of oil and gas at this critical moment will cause mass loss of life and irreversible damage to our country and the wider world (that much is clear even from the Glasgow Climate Pact you signed only last November at the end of COP26). To persist in such an enterprise is not just reckless, it is a criminal war of aggression against humanity, with the younger generations and the Global South on the frontline.
The Just Stop Oil coalition has taken the decision to suspend activities until 25th April, to give you the opportunity to make a statement on behalf of the Government that it will immediately halt all future licensing and consents for the exploration, development and production of fossil fuels in the UK.
If you do not fulfil your duty to the people we will be left with no choice but to escalate our campaign of civil resistance.
We will not be bystanders.
Just Stop Oil
