Activists occupy Carbon Neutral Company While Carbon Neutral Company
Occupies Houses of Parliament, 21.2.07
Three activists from London Rising Tide today barricaded themselves inside
the London headquarters of the Carbon Neutral Company. The protest took
place to high-light the damage that offset companies are doing in
promoting climate complacency in the general public.
London Rising Tide (LRT) had been invited by the Carbon Neutral Company to
take part in the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Climate Change, which is
chaired by the Carbon Neutral Company. But Rising Tide instead chose to
occupy the offices of the Carbon Neutral Company as a statement against
the CNC chairing a committee which they see as a clear conflict of
interest given that they are profiting form climate change.
Speaking from the blockade, LRT activist Sam Chase said that, “The Carbon
Neutral Company is today occupying the Houses Of Parliament, so we have
decided to occupy the Carbon Neutral Company. They have no business
chairing a committee like this. Their livelihoods and profit margins
depend on exploiting people’s anxiety about climate change, and as such
it’s a travesty that they are chairing a governmental panel on climate
change.”
Tony Gordon, who also took part in the occupation said that, “Offset
companies are selling consumers a peace of mind about climate change that
just shouldn’t exist. The whole idea of offsetting is a throw back to the
sale of indulgences to guilty sinners in the middle ages – both patently
ridiculous and ineffective.”
The occupation came the day after a report was published, “The Carbon
Neutral Myth – Offset Indulgences for your Climate Sins,” that was highly
critical of the offsets industry, arguing that not only were supposed
climate benefits impossible to quantify, that projects are also being
imposed on communities in the global South with little consultation.
Earlier, people from LRT outside the office had unfurled a banner reading
'carbon "offset = climate upset', and symbolically swept coal under a
piece of carpet, to symbolise the 'effectiveness' of carbon offsets. The
indoor activists left the office voluntarily at about 4.30 having occupied
the offices for the entire day.
for further info please please see
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6382253.stm
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