Breaching the peace
On Friday 8th of March, on International Women’s Day, the Scottish Oil Club held its annual black tie dinner for almost nine-hundred oil executives inside the National Museum of Scotland. Sponsored by big oil companies like BP and Shell, presumably it was intended the atmosphere would reflect the mood of the sector in 2019: one of “renewed optimism with a growth of upstream international deal making and a return to more buoyant exploration and production activities”.
This is despite clear evidence that oil and gas in existing, already-producing fields is enough to take us beyond a 1.5 degrees of warming¹. Yet for the oil companies, the investors, the banks, and the legal companies surrounding them, it’s still about growth and business as usual. North Sea exploration is booming again, with companies aiming to discover an additional 10 billion barrels of oil. BP, a sponsor of the dinner, recently celebrated first oil from the Clare Ridge oil field West of Shetland, expected to deliver 640 million barrels over its forty-year lifetime. Equinor, whose chair gave the keynote address, is opening major new oil fields in the North Sea, as well as drilling for new oil in the Arctic and in the Great Australian Bight. The Oil and Gas Authority just increased their estimate of recoverable reserves in the North Sea by 50%. Climate change in any meaningful sense, is simply not on their agenda.
Extinction Rebellion had other plans, throwing a #RigRebellion counter party outside. With bands, speakers, a ceilidh, a sound system, and much dancing in the rain. All of the organisation behind that: finding bands; designing flyers; writing press releases; organising stewards; sorting food; ensuring people’s well being; done at short notice by group of creative, passionate and incredibly talented people for no money, without taking instruction from bosses or managers.
That process is inspirational, and restored a huge amount of my faith in humanity. The chance connect to others with shared fears, shared hopes, and shared enthusiasm is a life affirming step in a disorientating world.
Yet, if that had been it, creative as it was, it would not have even registered on the radar of those arriving in black tie at the tower entrance, or the wider world. It would be much like current climate change policy, tolerated only as far as if doesn’t interfere with serious business.
But it didn’t end there, as inside concerned citizens occupied the main atrium, unfurling banners and holding something approaching a people’s assembly on the impact of the oil and gas industry. Many of us left when told by police we would be arrested. But thirteen others stayed and faced arrest, including six locked together with bicycle D-locks.
Finally cut out and arrested by 8pm, it was their action which delayed and disrupted the dinner until 10pm, giving the oil executives plenty of time outside in the rain to engage with protesters. It was that action which made the media take any interest. It was that action which may cause the National Museum of Scotland to reconsider whether it allow its standing and reputation to be used as cover for an industry whose long-term survival can only come at with catastrophic cost to human society and the natural, living world. As a final act, when the dinner’s keynote speech eventually went ahead, an activist still inside the museum dropped another banner which read “Thank you for our suicide, enjoy the feast while you still can”. He was also arrested.
In total, 14 people were arrested and charged under Section 38 of the Criminal Justice Act, commonly known as “breach of the peace” defined as:
It’s not clear to me how sitting locked together on the floor is behaving in a “threatening or abusive manner”, or whether it would “cause a reasonable person to suffer fear and alarm”, this is for a court to decide. Extinction Rebellion is dedicated to non-violence.
Personally, I feel fear and alarm knowing that we’re heading for 3 to 4 degrees of warming by 2100, with the chance of runaway warming to eight degrees. I feel fear and alarm knowing that most of Himalayan ice will melt by the end of the century. I feel fear and alarm that all of the world’s coral reefs will disappear within decades. I feel fear and alarm knowing that insect populations around the world are plummeting. I feel fear and alarm that the oceans are choked with plastic. I feel fear and alarm knowing the Arctic will be ice free in summer in as little as ten years, with the dark open ocean locking in ever more warming. I feel fear and alarm that the tropics and middle east will become practically uninhabitable in summer. I feel fear and alarm that we have a vanishing window of time left to act.
Most of all I feel fear alarm knowing that, despite all of the evidence, oil companies continue to invest billions of pounds in discovering and exploiting new reserves. To me that qualifies as “behaviour which would cause fear and alarm”, as is reckless to the consequences.
If by peace, we mean a state of denial as to the seriousness or the urgency of the climate emergency, then it becomes a moral duty to breach it.
Extinction Rebellion welcomes everyone and every part of every one. We need musicians, artists, writers, researchers, makers, doers, listeners and talkers. You don’t need to get arrested. Most of all we need humans who care and want to connect. Get involved. A crowdfunding appeal will be launched soon to help those who were arrested.
Footnotes
[1] See the analysis here regarding carbon budgets and known fossil fuel reserves. Many energy scenarios which claim to limit warming to below 2 degrees assume very large negative emissions from 2050 via bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS). Since this technology has not been proven at scale, this is a very dangerous assumption to make, since it masks the severity of the cuts needed now. Oil companies which pay lip service to the Paris agreement use scenarios with large negative emissions later in the century to justify their continued investments in new fossil fuel infrastructure now, without any quantitative analysis of how those investments impact remaining carbon budgets. There is absolutely no case for investing in prospecting for new oil reserves.
[2] Nobody is arguing for the the supply of fossil fuels to be turned off overnight: the resulting impact on human society would be brutal and catastrophic. The phase out of fossil fuels needs to be very rapid, but still planned and phased. The establishment of the Just Transition Commission in Scotland is promising, and must urgently apply a carbon budget approach set a firm limit on how much more oil and gas will be extracted. Scotland cannot act alone, as much of the regulatory, legal, and subsidy framework is set in Westminster. The longer any cuts are delayed, the steeper they need to be when they eventually happen. In continuing to make massive investments in new oil infrastructure, the industry is effectively saying it will travel full speed into a brick wall, with dire consequence for workers when the industry finally ends.
