Date: Friday, May 23, 2023
Complete Article: E&T (Engineering and Technology)
Excerpt:
Climate change protestors have slowed London traffic and crashed Shell’s shareholder AGM to highlight the frustrations felt by many people at the huge profits being made by fossil fuel companies and their inaction on critical climate mitigation measures.
The group posted footage of the Blackfriars Bridge confrontation on Twitter, saying:
“This is an impossible situation. That’s where our government has left us. More and more people are realising taking action is the right thing to do.
“Do we disrupt other ordinary people… or just sit back and watch everything burn?”
Meanwhile, over at the Excel conference centre in London’s Docklands, climate change protesters from a coalition of pressure groups disrupted oil giant Shell’s annual shareholder meeting, with some people attempting to storm the stage.
Early in the meeting, a group of protesters sang: “Go to Hell, Shell, and don’t you come back no more, no more, no more, no more” to the tune of the Ray Charles song ‘Hit The Road, Jack’. There was also a chorus of “We will, we will stop you” to the tune of Queen’s ‘We Will Rock You’.
Outside the Excel venue, climate protesters continued to hold a rally featuring drums, banners and speeches. Two demonstrators greeted AGM attendees with a makeshift archway decorated with flames in Shell’s corporate colours and the words ‘Welcome to Hell’ (pictured below).
Nuri Syed Corser, an organiser for Fossil Fuel London, told the PA news agency: “We are protesting because we need to shut down Shell. We are facing a climate crisis. Shell are one of the companies driving it and are making record profits even as people are facing devastating floods and wildfires. If we want a safe, secure and prosperous future, then we have to stop the oil and gas drilling. That means taking on the oil and gas giants like Shell who are determined to stonewall climate action and to string out oil and gas drilling for as long as they possibly can.”