'We will help clean up': Just Stop Oil explains protest pause over civil unrest

7 August 2024, 15:49

Just Stop Oil supporters are pausing our actions in response to the civil unrest ravaging towns and cities across the country.

Our community has been deeply disturbed by the events of recent days.

Disturbed, but not surprised.

What the country is experiencing is a taste of what scientists are telling us will happen, as climate chaos accelerates and makes the preservation of a stable society untenable.

We recognise that the violence on our streets is endangering communities, particularly those of Muslims and people of colour.

In accordance with our commitment to nonviolence, we will not stretch police resources, such that they are unable to protect communities most at risk. 

Our primary focus as a community is to resist facism, and so supporters of Just Stop Oil will be joining peaceful counter-demonstrations and will be taking part in local clean-up operations in the days ahead.

However, without the elimination of the underlying causes of this unrest, the violent disruption we are seeing on the streets is likely to continue.

This is the inevitable consequence of a broken political system, economic austerity, and the withdrawal of the social safety net.

Anger has been misdirected by agitators amongst the political class, the billionaire-owned press, and by other elites; who have been scapegoating the people who have done the least to create this situation.

There are those in the ruling class who would sooner foment the rise of fascism in order to preserve their own wealth, than see a fairer society that works better for everyone. 

Just Stop Oil has been engaging in nonviolent civil disobedience since 2022, and despite our controversial tactics, our original demand of ‘no new oil and gas’ has moved from a fringe issue, up the news agenda, to becoming a front-page issue spoken about daily.

Now it has become government policy.

We have shown that civil resistance works, much as it did in achieving universal suffrage, civil rights and marriage equality. 

Now we need internationally coordinated action to urgently phase-down the burning of fossil fuels, which is threatening the safety of our communities.

We need governments to enact a Fossil Fuel Treaty that ends the extraction and burning of oil, gas and coal by 2030.

Recent weeks have seen the four hottest days in recorded history.

Scientists are warning us that climate breakdown, driven by fossil-fuel burning and industrial scale animal agriculture is driving us towards irreversible tipping points that are making large parts of the world uninhabitable.

This is leading us towards crop-failure, famine, mass displacement, civil unrest and eventual societal collapse.

Each of us needs to be considering carefully what we are willing to sacrifice in order to protect our loved-ones from what is happening.

Just Stop Oil supporters take no pleasure in causing disruption, whilst dealing with the inevitable fines and imprisonment.

However, we are at a point in history where there are no easy options to try to avert the harm that is being imposed on us by those who prioritise corporate profits over life.