Just Stop Oil fundraisers were kicked out of greenwashing Earth Fest for doing anti-capitalist fundraising. Ironic, really, considering the group was one of the few things that was actually addressing the climate crisis properly at the sham Earth Fest.
Just Stop Oil: showing up Earth Fest
Two Just Stop Oil supporters were forcibly ejected from Earth-Fest whilst collecting donations for the group. The supporters were asking attendees to financially support effective direct action whilst donations to Just Stop Oil are doubled for the next three days:
🚨 BREAKING: Just Stop Oil Fundraisers Removed from Earth Fest
💬 "Are we really going to sit here and talk about electric cars and social media platforms? We need radical action."
💸 All donations between now and Earth Day will be matched. Donate here — https://t.co/R20S8YQD1j pic.twitter.com/mUZYhfA6AU
— Just Stop Oil (@JustStop_Oil) April 19, 2024
Earth Fest has been criticised for being a ‘greenwashing’ event with sponsors including AutoTrader and attendees including JP Morgan, Jet 2, Tesla, and Drax.
Peak greenwashing
For example, as the Canary previously reported Drax is the UK’s single largest carbon emitter, and world’s biggest tree burner. The company currently receives around £1.7 million per day in renewable subsidies from UK energy bills to burn wood – some of which comes from protected forests.
Meanwhile, Tesla has also come under repeated fire for its “capitalist sham solutions” to the climate crisis. As the Canary previously detailed, the extractive mining and manufacture of electric vehicles is a carbon-intensive and exploitative process:
There’s still the not so small matter that producing vehicles to replace the entire existing petroleum fleet will generate a lot of emissions. On top of this, you have the pollution and ecological destruction of extracting the multitude of critical minerals required for their manufacture. Not to mention the labour violations, rights abuses, and land-grabbing linked to mining for these materials.
Mack Preston and Isla Greenwood, a former Greenpeace fundraiser, carried buckets asking for donations at Earth Fest whilst wearing Just Stop Oil t-shirts. The pair took to a megaphone and could be heard saying “Are we really going to sit here and talk about electric cars? We need radical action!”
Give us your money (but not in the Bob Geldof way)
For the next three days, until Earth Day, all donations to Just Stop Oil will be doubled by a group of generous donors.
You can donate to the campaign and have your donation doubled here – money better spent than at Earth Fest.
A spokesperson for the group said:
We’re out of time. It is no longer appropriate to be sitting in endless conferences that achieve nothing. We need radical action now and we need system change to avoid the worst effects of ongoing climate breakdown and societal collapse.
We need to be funding effective direct action that gets the headlines and forces this issue up the news agenda and to the forefront of the public consciousness. History has shown over and over that disruptive civil resistance gets the goods. Donate to Just Stop Oil and have it doubled at Just Stop Oil.org.
Featured image and additional images via Just Stop Oil
