Stop Fake Climate Shipping Laws
16.11.2020
On Sunday 15th November Environmental campaigners, including members of Ocean Rebellion, engaged in a series of escalating actions against the International Maritime Organisation (IMO).
The protest began just after 16.30 outside the offices of the United Nations International Maritime Organisation (IMO) where the Marine Environment Protection Committee is meeting.
Viking burial of IMO’s lack of climate ambition:
Protesters wearing pinstripe suits and masks made from salvaged waste oil containers found washed up on a Cornish beach, set fire to a Viking longship which bore a sail reading PARIS CLIMATE AGREEMENT.
One of the pin-striped characters claimed, “I represent the delegates of the IMO conference and the burning ship represents all the delegates blatant disregard for the Paris Climate Agreement and the ambition it contains. Ocean Rebellion believes the Paris Climate Agreement already underachieves on the ambition to keep planetary warming below 1.5 degrees. This makes the IMO’s initial GHG Strategy even more catastrophic. We ask the IMO what on earth are you doing? If the IMO continues mismanaging shipping pollution there will be no planet to mismanage any more.”
France set to betray the Paris Agreement:
The demonstration continued into the evening when at 22.00 the group Ocean Rebellion projected slogans and data onto the French Embassy to highlight the country’s role in the negotiation of an IMO measure that will see ship GHG emissions continue to rise for a decade at least.
A spokesperson for the group said “Our demand is simple: Get Ships Off Fossil Fuels, to stop climate breakdown, prevent repeated negligent fossil fuel oil spills including in the Arctic, and to protect people’s livelihoods, and our precious marine environments. .”
She added “The IMO has a chance to turn things around. To make a real difference not just to marine life but to our survival as a species on this planet. But it needs to step up now. To get out of bed with the fossil fuel industry and stand up for the environment.”
ICS ship industry wins award for wrecking climate ambition:
The protests continued at 12.00 noon on Monday 16th November outside the Baltic Exchange, home to the International Chamber of Shipping (ICS). ICS are a co-sponsor of the IMO’s latest climate “non-regulation” that allows ship GHG emissions to continue rising for the next decade at least. Where a trio of the masked suited characters representing ship industry executives reappeared, this time vomiting and urinating fake oil onto a sculpture of a baby polar bear. The protest continued when a group known as the Dirty Scrubbers arrived to clean up the oil. They offered to help the ICS ‘clean up its act’ and to ‘stop the greenwash’ and cleaned up the street ‘oil spill’.
A spokesperson for the scrubbers known as ‘Pearl’ said: ‘We think it’s disgusting that the International Chamber of Shipping doesn’t clean up its mess. It’s filthy, it’s dirty and it’s like they’re being paid by the fossil fuel industry or something’.
The scrubbers then presented the ICS with an award for the FOSSIL FUEL LOBBYIST OF THE YEAR.
Why today?
The IMO, its delegates and the shipping industry have proposed a deal that will sink the Paris Agreement – behind closed doors.
We live in a globalized world – just take a look at where your clothes or trainers were made.
But all this stuff doesn’t move around the world by magic – 80% of the tonnage of all global trade is carried by ship.
The problem? There are 60,000 of these huge cargo ships and rising, all burning the dirtiest, cheapest type of oil. Together they pump over 1 BILLION tonnes of greenhouse gases into our atmosphere every year (as much as 271 coal fired power plants!)
That’s more CO2 than all but the top five highest emitting countries in the world – but we never talk about it. Shipping is one of THE biggest drivers of the climate crisis.
Japan, Panama, Norway and industry lobby group the International Chamber of Shipping (ICS), are lobbying for shipping’s giant emissions to be allowed to keep growing for another decade, putting the entire Paris Agreement, and a safe climate, at risk.
So who’s in charge? Supposedly the UN’s International Maritime Organisation (IMO). However instead of serving the public interest, many country delegations to IMO have long since been corruptly controlled by the industry they’re supposed to regulate.
Your government is taking part in the next round of climate talks at IMO, happening November 16-20. They need to be told what to do by you, not by the industry.
We demand governments and the IMO rejected the current proposal on the tale and return to negotiations to develop a proposal that turns shipping emissions downwards immediately, acting now to address the climate emergency and respect slender remaining Paris compliant carbon budgets in a credible and science based manner.
By making a climate plan for shipping that meets the Paris agreement the shipping industry could prevent the same amount of CO2 entering our atmosphere as shutting 90 coal-fired power plants over the next decade!
Our demand is simple: Stop fake laws and move this week to agree plans to Get Ships Off Fossil Fuels fast, to prevent repeated negligent fossil fuel spills, protect people’s livelihoods, protect precious marine environments, and to protect our climate from fossil-fuelled breakdown.
TWEET
the French embassy @franceintheuk, International Chamber of Shipping @shippingics, the Panama shipping registry @ShipPanama, Norway embassy @NorwayinUK, and your own government.
Demand they #SortYourShipOut and #GetShipsOffFossilFuels and #StopFakeLaws