Climate protesters target Shell HQ ahead of ‘grotesque profiteering’ financial announcement
A group of climate activists targeted the Shell headquarters on Sunday projecting messages and replaced bus adverts criticising the oil company.
Shell is expected to announce another financial quarter of enormous profits on Thursday, while energy bills for South Londoners have soared.
The oil company is expected to reveal a £67bn profit in the past year, on top of its £44bn profit the previous year.
On Sunday evening, anonymous activists projected anti-oil and gas messages on to Shell’s Waterloo headquarters in Belvedere Road, opposite the London Eye.
The slogans said ‘Shell’s Profits = Our Poverty’ and ‘Shell: Burning Our Planet’.
Although profits are expected to have dipped from their recent record highs, profiting from high gas prices clearly remains lucrative.
Anti-Shell adverts also appeared at bus stops around Camberwell and Brixton over the weekend. “Shut Down Shell“, demanded one.
Shell is continuing to expand its oil and gas drilling operations, despite a warning from the International Energy Agency that there can be no new fossil fuel projects if we are to keep global heating below the crucial 1.5 degree threshold.
Fewer than 14 per cent of Shell’s investments are in renewables.
Joanna Warrington, 28, from Brixton, a spokeswoman for Fossil Free London, a London-based group which campaigns against Shell, said: “Shell’s grotesque profiteering from surging gas prices is making people poor.
“As people freeze in our homes, we can see ever more clearly that oil companies produce the same result again and again: destruction.
“Shell is driving the climate crisis, which is destroying the weather, water and food that we all need to survive. And Shell is destroying people’s ability to support themselves and their families.
“Thankfully the climate and price crises also have the same solution: an end to the profiteering of big business and massive investment in affordable, clean energy that’s becoming cheaper and more popular every day.
“We support the message of these guerilla projections and ad-hacks. It’s time to shut down Shell and demand a livable future.”
Shell has been contacted for comment.
Pictured top: Anti-Shell message projected on to Shell headquarters in Waterloo (Picture: Fossil Free London)
Everyone at the South London Press thanks you for your continued support.
Former Housing Secretary Robert Jenrick has encouraged everyone in the country who can afford to do so to buy a newspaper, and told the Downing Street press briefing:
“A FREE COUNTRY NEEDS A FREE PRESS, AND THE NEWSPAPERS OF OUR COUNTRY ARE UNDER SIGNIFICANT FINANCIAL PRESSURE”
If you can afford to do so, we would be so grateful if you can make a donation which will allow us to continue to bring stories to you, both in print and online. Or please make cheques payable to “MSI Media Limited” and send by post to South London Press, Unit 112, 160 Bromley Road, Catford, London SE6 2NZ
