oil

Yesterday, we took action. We closed 78 petrol Shell stations in London and Edinburgh to protest against Shells mission to drill for oil in the Arctic. We broadcast the action live from the ground, on the world’s first live direct action TV channel (we think), which ran for 12 hours, watched by over 14,000 people around the world. This happened as part of Greenpeace UK's contribution to the Greenpeace global week of action happening all around the world to save the Arctic.

It's not often you get to be part of a major piece of activism and a 12-hour live broadcast at the same time. But that's exactly what's been happening today.

While sqauds of volunteers close down Shell petrol stations in Edinburgh and London, a team of presenters, camera operators, vision mixers and editors (with one person often covering many of those roles!) have been running a special online TV channel from the Greenpeace warehouse in north London.

It's action stations at the petrol stations. Right now, teams of Greenpeace volunteers are shutting Shell forecourts across London and Edinburgh. The teams are fanning out across the two cities, going station to station shutting down the pumps. In total, over 100 forecourts will be out of action, and it's all because Shell has a fleet of vessels on its way to the Arctic where they'll be drilling for oil in the next few weeks.

This week the European Commission published a new draft proposal on car efficiency for 2020. They agreed to stick with their original target but have missed a chance to go further towards getting us off our oil addiction.