We must prevent any attempt to reduce the climate change discussions to carbon dioxide. Beyond carbon, climate change expresses a world order that is sustained by the exploitation and violation of peoples and their resources. Ending climate change will mean dismantling the order." Oil has fuelled economic growth for over a century, while the oil industry and the financial structures it supports have torn communities apart, trashed ecosystems and helped trigger climate chaos in a ceaseless shabby hustle for 'shareholder value. Here Sam Chase, of the Rising Tide UK Network, explains why the campaign on climate change is targeting oil companies. The British Red Cross reported that in 1998, 25 million people were displaced by environmental disasters. This is more than the number displaced by war. The fossil fuel industry, dominated by the monolithic trio of ExxonMobil, BP and Shell, stands right in the eye of this hurricane, reaping the benefits of chaos and turmoil. If we are going to avoid social and ecological meltdown then we must challenge the structures that maintain this growth-at- all-costs economic system. This means changes at all levels, from serious cuts in our personal consumption to a revolutionary transformation into a low energy, no profit society. Some people tell us that appealing to government is the best way to solve our social and ecological problems. But we will only have the chance to vote in general elections twelve more times before the year 2050, and none of the policy to reduce carbon mainstream parties has any emissions by the sixty to ninety per cent needed to stabilise carbon levels in the atmosphere. Yet if this is not done, ex-Environment Minister Michael Meacher has himself warned that the planet may no longer sustain life by 2050. 8 Rising Tide: Isaac Osuoka, Environmental Rights Action, Nigeria (www.eraction.org) Kyoto Treaty In November 2000, as the UK fuel protests were reaching their height, an aircraft hangar-sized exhibition hall in den Haag, in the Netherlands, opened its doors to the Kyoto Protocol travelling circus. Known as the United Nations Conference of the Parties to the Framework Convention on Climate Change, or COP6, this was a trade fair poorly disguised as an environmental conference. While most participants in the Kyoto charade were saying that this was the only hope of making meaningful reductions in carbon dioxide emissions, it became increasingly plain that the process would never achieve such reductions. The real agenda was the creation of a free market in carbon: ingenious new profit-making opportunities for the corporations and governments that were responsible for the problem in the first place. Disappointed at the limp analysis and lacklustre participation of green groups immersed in the process. a small but determined group of people from all over the world came together to show how that process was dominated by vested interests. This group - known as the Rising Tide coalition - was concerned above all to say 'It's time for climate justice', the right of everyone on the planet to clean air, a long-term future and social justice, all threatened by the onset of climate chaos. It also rejected outright all attempts to privatise the atmosphere, that is the trading of emissions between countries and companies. When you consider that climate change is caused by the over-consumption of fossil fuels by the rich, and that the first people to feel the effects of climate change are the poor; when you consider that the process to prevent climate change is dominated by the rich, who come up with solutions that impose upon the poor... then you stop seeing climate change as a problem of atmospheres and gases and start seeing it as a problem of social and ecological justice.'
Enter Rising Tide With the aid of some fancily forged passes, a few of us entered this glorified shopping mall in a metaphorical attempt to carve the initials of the dispossessed into the immaculately polished table of the great and the good. In other words: banners dropped, pies thrown and meetings disrupted, alongside the on-the-street stuff and a Climate Justice summit. The Sierra Club and Greenpeace USA went to all the trouble of issuing a statement disassociating themselves from the pieing of US delegation corporate top dog Frank E. Loy, presumably in order to protect their right to the baby chair at the table of power. COP6 ended in deadlock, which pleased no one except the radical interlopers and the oil industry lobby groups, for markedly different reasons! In grassroots resistance terms, we hoped that actions in and around COP6 would catalyse the creation of a strong, people-led movement of resistance to climate change and the economic and social system that is causing it. Some of the UK people who went to the Netherlands were inspired enough to kickstart a creative, radical, diverse and long-term movement on this issue. That led in 2001 to the setting up of the Rising Tide (RT) UK network, which is still thriving in 2004. RTUK's scattered national contacts. supported by a small team of (low-) paid staff in Oxford, organise gatherings, actions, media and outreach. Particular projects in 2004 include helping to inject a creative, radical take on climate change at the European Social Forum in London in October and against the G8, also in London, in 2005; the setting up of a coalition calling for 'No New Oil' (or coal or gas) development; producing a regular email newssheet sent out to over a thousand people, and making a short film (called Cheeky Apocalypse) looking at the deranged way TV covered the record-breaking UK temperatures of August 2003. Much of the action in the UK has been focused in London. where there has been an active group since July 2002. when it called a 'Climate Criminals Critical Mass', a weekday bike ride that took in the International Finance Corporation (the private funding arm of the World Bank), a marketing agency, and many private banks, all complicit to some degree in BP's then-planned, now-stalled Baku- Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline. BTC, once a jewel in the tarnished crown of US foreign policy, is set to run from Azerbaijan to Turkey via Georgia. It will be a human rights disaster and will produce over 150M tonnes of CO2 each year for 40 years, causing untold damage to the world's climate? Fortunately, and thanks in part to a tenacious campaign of lobbying and direct action against it, BTC is now mired increasingly in controversy and damaging publicity for BP.+ Targeting BP Apart from regular stalls and other outreach, and lending a hand to a successful occupation of the International Petroleum Exchange during the Iraq invasion in March 2003, London Rising Tide has concentrated exclusively on BP. There are several dangers to this form of activism. It can foster the illusion that the oil industry has the occasional bad apple or bad practice that can somehow be remedied by campaigning and boycotting. However, while the whole industry has to be dismantled. it is still strategically and psychologically useful to go up against one company or pipeline, particularly if it is vulnerable and there is some chance of victory. Apart from the shoddy arrogance of the construction process itself, BTC's chief vulnerability is that BP sought over fifty per cent of the US$3.3bn construction costs from UK and global taxpayers. Single issue or single company campaigns can sometimes lead to a diminution of anti-capitalist arguments. campaigning to prevent public money allocated to BTC, we found ourselves putting pressure international banks and obscure semi-privatised government departments like the Export Credits Guarantee Department to make a particular decision, when our politics were screaming 'What are you doing lobbying an institution whose right to exist you don't even recognise? I don't care if your form of lobbying involves an uninvited occupation of the Chief Executive's office - it's still lobbying!' But despite the dangers, we have stuck to BP like a leech, or rather, stuck leechlike to those companies and institutions satelliting around the mothership that is BP. The theory - and I think it's a pretty good one - goes like this: BP is Britain's biggest company, it is well-resourced, well-respected and its employees are mostly ridiculously loyal. Those that orbit around it, though, are often smaller, more vulnerable either economically or in terms of public relations, and its employees are more liable to be receptive to our worldview, especially if we present it accessibly and 9
Children, Flora & Fauna International and WWF for their be exact), transformed into an 'art not oil' exhibition of Www.burningplanet.netAc.m Donit fund the Pipelie i less Destruction A group as small as London Rising Tide cannot expect the occasional short-term blockade of a refinery or petrol station to have a direct economic impact. But it can zone in on the achilles heel that BP has exposed with its hyperactive programme of public relations and saturation sponsorship of London's museums, galleries, opera and theatre. Ever since BP invested millions of pounds in a complete rebrand, with a new 'helios' logo and "beyond petroleum' slogan, and started pumping serious money into sponsorship, it has been dancing on highly profitable but dangerously thin ice. With every duplicitous claim to be a good corporate citizen, for example hiding its support for, say, Colombian paramilitaries and a hypocritical evangelist for renewable energies (not telling the public that it is solidly committed to expanding its oil and gas output by 3.5% every year), it has laid itself open to brand damage. Which is where we come in. For two years, London Rising Tide (LRT) has been present at pretty much every event where BP has shown its face. We have disrupted presentations by its boss and chairman, we have brought a BTC presentation at an oily Caspian carve- up conference to a standstill, we have targeted Tate Britain, Gallery, Natural History Museum, Science Museum, British Museum and Royal Opera House (all BP-sponsored, as is the Barbican, which he haven't got round to yet), and we've shamed charities like Save the 10 Suolisors Climate Chaus BIL FUELS CLiMATE EAXE5 willingness to collaborate with and sometimes take cash from the company for specific projects. LRT "celebrated' BP's Annual General Meeting in 2003 by holding a Carnival Against Oil Wars and Climate Chaos and Alternative AGM outside. Several concerned members of the public also entered the meeting in order to make absolutely sure their concerns had not been swamped by the mile high tide of greenwash that engulfed the Oil Festival Hall (OFH) for the day. Since then, BP, Shell, ExxonMobil and all the other big oil companies have profited handsomely from a murderous, deceit-ridden war in Iraq. Fossil fuel-induced climate chaos hit Europe in August 2003, killing tens of thousands in record-breaking temperatures, and BP boss Lord Browne's salary soared to just under the f5m mark, as his company's North Sea and other oilworkers saw their personal safety, union rights and wages increasingly in tatters. 'Greenwash or Us' In 2004, LRT and friends again targeted BP's AGM, but the main event of the year so far for us has been 'Greenwash or Us: the Ist Annual Exhibition of Resistance to Big Oil and the Corporate Hijacking of 'the Arts". This was a squatted Camden shop (50 Chalk Farm Road, to
paintings, photographs and sculptures to coincide with the philosophy. But as of August 2004, things are very quiet. BP-sponsored National Portrait Award, held at the National Portrait Gallery (NPG) in June. As well as collaborating with local people to run the thriving Camden space well into the autumn with an exhibition, infopoint, cinema, party and workshop events, there were a series of successful actions at the NG during June, including a blockade of the imposing front entrance on the night of the announcement of the winner. Media coverage was sporadic, apart from a very tasty piece in the Financial Times which signed off with this paragraph: 'Pride of place goes to a portrait showing Lord Browne's "benign mask" slipping to reveal "a satanic look". Organisers claimed the artwork "paints a true portrait of an oil company"? This targeted pressure is a combination of strategy and the fact that BP's arrogance and the blithe insouciance of the cultural establishment makes us angry. For example, the Tate has so-called ethical guidelines for its 'commercial relationships'. These exclude companies involved with either arms, tobacco or alcohol, even though it is plain to see that the oil industry is responsible for more death and destitution than tobacco and alcohol combined. After all, neither sells a product that threatens the long-term future of the human species. The good news is that less than fifteen years ago, the National Portrait Award was sponsored by a tobacco company, until they decided that their reputation was being damaged by such an association. Removing oil from the picture would mean the industry had one less place to hide, and would allow the public gaze to settle more conclusively and damagingly on its true activities. In many ways, Rising Tide in the UK is in pretty good health, though it has still to make a strong connection with potential allies like refugees, those campaigning for better resourced, unprivatised public transport, and groups such as the Bangladeshi community who have close ties to areas threatened by rising sea levels. Sadly, the mostly Europe- based Rising Tide International network has withered There were inspiring actions at COP 6.5 in Berlin in 2002. and a buzzing gathering in Barcelona in 2002 came up with a political statement which is still the basis of the non- hierarchical, anti-colonial, direct action-based Rising Tide 'Exposer: BP inpipeline careles citemenal dockomb pette bespage becalled in Sponsors: Climate Chaos www.burningplanet.com Hope is hovering on the horizon, however, as there is now a climate justice-led initiative to set up a new Europe- wide network of action and communication, inspired to some degree by the southern-based Oilwatch network The plan is for 'European days of action against the oil industry and for a fossil fuel-free future, to coincide with the European Social Forum and related events in London from October 14-17, 2004. This will allow people attending the ESF to join a feisty action as well as the usual workshops and discussions. It will also with any luck reap benefits from the rise in morale triggered by simultaneous action against a seemingly unassailable adversary, and act as the launch of said Europe-wide network of resistance to Big (and small) Oil. Human-triggered climate change is here; our children will be unlikely to see the back of it, even if we drastically cut emissions tomorrow. We need to deal with it, and soon. Solutions need to accept the right of the majority of the world's people not to be washed away for the profits of a very few. The atmosphere - not to mention the earth itself - is a common treasury for everyone not to buy and sell but to share. Our species has forgotten that message at its great peril, but maybe the wake up call that is climate chaos will jog us out of the psychotic reverie that is capitalism that currently calls the shots. I kg of Kiwi fruit air-freighted from New Zealand emits 5kg of CO2 into the atmosphere: as climate change challenges the very viability of the capitalist system it asks fundamental questions about the ability of the market to serve as the co-ordinating mechanism of the social order. Rising Tide UK can be contacted at: c/o 62 Fieldgate Street, London El IES Also at: [email protected] www.londonrisingtide.org.uk www.risingtide.org.uk 11