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climate protest
'I Believe He Would Approve': Charles Darwin's Grave Graffitied in Climate Protest
"We've done this because there's no hope for the world, really," said one of the activists who participated.
Jan 13, 2025
Two activists with the group Just Stop Oil on Monday used orange spray chalk paint to write "1.5 Is Dead" on the gravestone of Charles Darwin—the scientist most famous for developing the theory of evolution by natural selection.
In a statement released Monday, Just Stop Oil, a British group demanding an end to fossil fuel use, said that the action was taken in order to "demand that the U.K. government works with others to phase out the extraction and burning of fossil fuels by 2030."
The BBC reported that Met Police were called to the incident in Westminster Abbey in London and said two women were arrested on suspicion of causing criminal damage.
The message "1.5 Is Dead" is in reference to the news on Friday that 2024 was "the first year with an average temperature clearly exceeding 1.5°C above the pre-industrial level," according to the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S). 2024 was 1.60°C warmer than the pre-industrial level.
Signatories to the Paris climate agreement pledged to reduce their global greenhouse gas emissions with the aim of keeping global temperature rise this century to 1.5ºC, well below 2°C above preindustrial levels. According to the United Nations, going above 1.5ºC on an annual or monthly basis doesn't constitute failure to reach the agreement's goal, which refers to temperature rise over decades—however, "breaches of 1.5°C for a month or a year are early signs of getting perilously close to exceeding the long-term limit, and serve as clarion calls for increasing ambition and accelerating action in this critical decade."
The news comes as California is reeling from multi-day wildfires that have consumed tens of thousands of acres of Los Angeles County and killed over 20 people.
"We've done this because there's no hope for the world, really," said one of the activists who was arrested, Di Bligh. "We've done it on Darwin's grave specifically because he would be turning in that grave because of the sixth mass extinction taking place now," the activist said, according to the BBC.
The other protestor, Alyson Lee, said she did not think Darwin would be unhappy with their act of climate protest: "I believe he would approve because he was a good scientist and he would be following the science, and he would be as upset as us with the government for ignoring the science."
Two Just Stop Oil activists were arrested in England last summer after they sprayed an orange powder on the monoliths at Stonehenge. According to a statement released at the time from Just Stop Oil, the protestors "decorated" Stonehenge to demand that the U.K. government commit to "working with other governments to agree an equitable plan to end the extraction and burning of oil, gas, and coal by 2030."
Greta Thunberg Detained at Brussels Climate Protest Against Fossil Fuel Subsidies
"Our politicians have failed us," a campaigner said. "European leaders' continued support for the fossil fuel industry raises serious questions about their commitment to effective climate action."
Oct 06, 2024
Renowned activist Greta Thunberg was detained on Saturday at a climate protest in Brussels aimed at ending European Union fossil fuel subsidies.
The protest included hundreds of campaigners from Extinction Rebellion and other groups; they came together under the name United for Climate Justice (UCJ). One group of them marched in an area near the European Parliament, while another group that included Thunberg blocked a section of the Boulevard du Jardin Botanique.
"Our politicians have failed us," Paolo Destilo, a UCJ spokesperson, told Politico. "European leaders' continued support for the fossil fuel industry raises serious questions about their commitment to effective climate action."
Another UCJ spokesperson, Angela Huston Gold, pointed to devastating floods that recently hit Europe and Africa as a warning sign for the planet.
"Increasingly frequent and extreme natural disasters are likely to claim a billion victims by the end of the century, mainly due to the use of fossil fuels," Huston Gold said in a statement, citing a 2023 study in Energies, a journal. "To avoid ecological and social collapse, fossil fuel subsidies must end now."
😊Happy to see @GretaThunberg keeping us company! pic.twitter.com/yVwj1IPeTR
— stopfossilsubsidies (@stopfossilsubs) October 5, 2024
The European Commission published a report last year showing that the EU spent 123 billion euros ($135 billion) on fossil fuel subsidies in 2022, an increase on previous years that was caused by policy decisions following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. (2022 was the last year included in the report.) The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development listed still higher figures for 2022.
EU's Eighth Environment Action Program, which entered into force in May 2022, calls for a phaseout of fossil fuel subsidies, but national governments haven't taken action, so progress is "uncertain," according to the European Environment Agency, which is part of the EU.
Thunberg on Saturday told Politico that European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who's been in office since 2019, was not a green champion.
UCJ on Tuesday sent an open letter to von der Leyen and other EU institutional leaders calling for a phaseout of fossil fuel subsidies by 2025. "The EU should provide technical and financial assistance to member states facing challenges in meeting phaseout deadlines and offer incentives for achieving milestones ahead of schedule," it says.
Staffers at the European Commission were in fact among the demonstrators in Brussels on Saturday, Politico reported.
"There's a lot of tools the institutions have now to fight climate change, but since the [European Parliament elections in June] there's been a lot of backtracking," one commission staffer told Politico, given anonymity in order to speak freely.
"It's now all about competitiveness and the 'clean industrial deal,' whatever that means," the staffer added. "The urgency has been lost—the Parliament has shifted to the right, the commission in many ways has shifted to the right—and discussion of the climate has faded into the background."
Thunberg, who's now 21, came to fame as a 15-year-old activist in Sweden who helped form the global school strikes for climate movement. She's been arrested numerous times, including at a pro-Palestinian demonstration in Denmark earlier this month.
Thunberg and other activists who sat with interlocked arms on the Boulevard du Jardin Botanique were arrested and taken to the police station, according to The Brussels Times.
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