What's wrong with oil?
"When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty"
If we don’t move on from oil we don’t have a chance of avoiding catastrophic climate chaos. The planet’s climate system is already sliding into crisis, and we’re dangerously close to the point of no return. We can’t afford to burn the oil we have already tapped into. Finding new oil reserves is the very last thing we need, and yet oil companies continue, year on year, month on month, day on day scouring the planet for the very last drops of new, dirty oil.
Those who came before us did not know about climate change, and those who will come after us will be powerless to stop it. Only those of us alive here and now have the chance to turn this around and avoid climate catastrophe.
It’s clear that political leaders, in the UK and internationally, don’t have the will or guts to make the changes needed. And whilst their profits keep rolling in, the oil companies are, unsurprisingly, showing no sign of changing their ways. They do what they do because it makes them filthy rich. It is a tragic injustice that the effects of climate change will hit the world’s poorest hardest.
We’re not saying it is going to be easy. Big changes often aren’t. But when you are at the petrol station paying through the nose, or watching people sitting alone in their cars, queuing bumper to bumper in a traffic jam, don’t you begin to think that maybe there is a better way? For a start, maybe, a reliable, affordable public transport system?
There are positive solutions out there, but we are never going to see the transition we need if profits dictate decisions at the expense of people and the environment. The bankers caused this financial crisis, we bailed them out, and now we are told that our public services are going to be slashed because we are broke. The wrong people are setting the agenda.
It’s time to get our priorities straight. We are in one of the richest counties in the world; a country that started belching out carbon emissions from fossil fuels way back before almost all others. If we can’t get a grip and make the transition, who can? We are talking about facing up to this challenge and taking real and proportionate steps to create a future with a safer climate and a fairer global society.
We are part of a global movement for climate justice and through our actions against the oil economy we will show solidarity with people across the world affected by the climate crisis and by the devastating effects of the fossil fuel industry. The Crude Awakening is part of the Climate Justice Action (CJA) global call for action for climate justice. CJA is a global network of people struggling against the root causes of climate change.
Easy to access oil reserves are drying up, and oil companies are taking ever more drastic and risky steps in ever more remote corners of the world to find new crude. Some say we have already reached peak oil. So if the transition is coming whether we like it or not why wait until we have found, drilled and burnt all of the filthy, polluting stuff? We don’t have the luxury of sitting by and watching the likes of BP and Exxon suck the last oily profits out of the earth. The time has come to pull the brakes and switch off oil.
As a movement, our actions against coal and aviation have made a real difference. Now oil’s time is up.
Be there.
For more information about the facts and politics of climate change, we recommend:
Wake Up Freak Out film
Climate Camp's summary of the science of climate change
Why Oil? For those of you who prefer a punchy list, here are just a few reasons...
- Because oil companies search for new oil reserves to make themselves richer while our climate spins into crisis.
- Because the UK government starts wars for oil.
- Because of human rights abuses and murder in West Africa.
- Because of the Deepwater Horizon spill.
- Because of the destruction of wilderness in the Arctic and the coast of Rossport in Ireland.
- Because of UK public money being used by bailed out banks to fund new oil projects.
- Because London is brimming with oil money, oil sponsorship and oil companies.
- Because global energy resources are the people's commons.
- Because oil companies and the filthy rich people who profit from them have no place in a sustainable future.
- Because Copenhagen failed and now it’s down to us.
- Because oil has had its day and it’s time we pulled the plug.
