Oil Kills: governments ‘cannot arrest their way out of the climate crisis’

The following article is a comment piece from Oil Kills

In the last three weeks, over 500 ordinary people from 14 countries across Europe, North America and Africa have been engaged in a campaign of civil resistance at international airports. People from 22 different civil resistance groups have united under the Oil Kills banner in support of one demand – a Fossil Fuel Treaty to end oil, gas and coal by 2030.

Oil Kills: taking a pause

Flights, passengers and journeys have been severely disrupted as action takers glued themselves to tarmac, stood up in airplanes, glued and locked on at departure gates and held placards in airport terminals. There have been 144 arrests at 31 different international airports, with 14 people still held in prison on remand in the UK.

Today Oil Kills is announcing a pause in our international collaborative actions to allow time for politicians to consider our demands. But this is not the end, the fight will go on. We remain in civil resistance against our murderous governments and the criminal elites who are threatening the survival of humanity.

The facts are clear, we are flying towards the obliteration of everything we know and love. Continuing to extract and burn oil, gas and coal is an act of war against humanity. It will kill hundreds of millions of people, adding to the already mounting global death toll from climate breakdown. It will push our climate, oceans and the living world beyond the point of no return, triggering runaway global heating and setting in motion an unstoppable process of global societal collapse.

To know these facts and yet to have no plan to end the extraction and burning of oil, gas and coal is reckless and immoral. Our politicians are complicit in the greatest crime in human history. Whether those in charge realise that they are engaging in genocide, is not the question. For this is how it will be seen by the next generation and all future generations.

So for now we are taking a pause, but governments must take heed: you cannot arrest your way out of this, just as you cannot imprison a flood or serve injunctions on a wildfire.

You cannot arrest your way out of the climate crisis

If you continue to ignore the looming reality, if you fail to protect the public from what is coming, then ordinary people will continue to take matters into their own hands to do what you have failed to do. We will act to protect humanity by stopping the machine that is causing us harm – the global fossil economy.

To the public we say it is time to face reality: no one is coming to save us. There is no free pass, no shelter from the coming storm. Our best chance of survival is to resist. To join the growing numbers of ordinary, everyday people, from across the globe who are refusing to stand by while hundreds of millions of innocent people are murdered.

The climate crisis will not end until every single country has phased out fossil fuels, but those who bear the greatest responsibility and have the greatest capacity must do the most. As citizens of wealthy countries based in the global north, we continue to demand that our governments stop extracting and burning oil, gas and coal by 2030 and that they support and finance other countries to make a fast, fair and just transition.

In this time of crisis, we expect our governments to work collaboratively, as we have done, and negotiate a Fossil Fuel Treaty to end the war on humanity before we lose everything.

Featured image via Oil Kills