Today is a day for action. After a long and arduous process the Kyoto Protocol comes into force and business as usual is not an option.
Thirty-five Greenpeace volunteers halted trading on the global oil market by occupying the International Petroleum Exchange in London. They entered the high security building near Tower Bridge shortly before 2pm, just as the world market in Brent crude was about to switch to London.
| They attached distress alarms to helium balloons, blew foghorns and handcuffed themselves to the trading pit, forcing the exchange to shut down. The International Petroleum Exchange does one thousand billion dollars of business each year and trading at the London exchange sets the price for 60 percent of the world's oil. |
The Exchange specialises in so-called 'open outcry' trading, where all orders have to be shouted in a clear and audible voice. But the Greenpeace volunteers with their floating alarms and foghorns have made that form of trading impossible.
The Exchange specialises in so-called 'open outcry' trading, where all orders have to be shouted in a clear and audible voice. But the Greenpeace volunteers with their floating alarms and foghorns have made that form of trading impossible.
The Kyoto Protocol is designed to cut emissions of greenhouse gases from fossil fuels like oil. But Kyoto targets, which are now legally binding, fall well short of what is needed to seriously fight climate change. We are rapidly approaching a point of no return. Tony Blair and other world leaders must use this year's G8 to move the world onto a different track.
Later Greenpeace activists distrupted the oil industry's most prestigious annual gathering at a Park Lane hotel. The volunteers blockaded the £250 a-plate dinner as Middle East energy ministers and the heads of some of the world's most powerful companies arrived. On the day the world finally enacted Kyoto, the oil industry has been forced to face the reality of what they're doing.
Dangerous climate change is already with us. According to the World Health Organisation 150,000 people are killed every year by climate change. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a UN body comprising the world's most eminent climate scientists, predicts temperatures will rise this century by as much a five degrees Celsius.
Tony Blair has said he will put climate change at the top of the agenda for this summer's G8 meeting in Scotland, but he has thus far failed to push for a strong European position or extract concessions from President Bush, while UK carbon dioxide emissions have not gone down since New Labour came to power.
The Greenpeace volunteers say they will remain in the trading pit for as long as they can. On normal days the world trades oil at the London exchange between 2pm and 7.30pm.
