Oil spill at the Natural History Museum (& demos in Aberdeen & Manchester)

3.02.2007

Today at the Shell-spon­sored Wildlife Pho­tog­ra­ph­er of the Year exhi­bi­tion at the Nat­ur­al His­to­ry Muse­um, 20 activists inspired by the Camp for Cli­mate Action (1), smeared oil over the pho­tographs. This was an act of out­rage at Shell’s painful­ly trans­par­ent attempts to green­wash its rep­u­ta­tion via cul­tur­al spon­sor­ship.

3.02.2007

Today at the Shell-spon­sored Wildlife Pho­tog­ra­ph­er of the Year exhi­bi­tion at the Nat­ur­al His­to­ry Muse­um, 20 activists inspired by the Camp for Cli­mate Action (1), smeared oil over the pho­tographs. This was an act of out­rage at Shell’s painful­ly trans­par­ent attempts to green­wash its rep­u­ta­tion via cul­tur­al spon­sor­ship.

Shel­l’s spon­sor­ship of the Nat­ur­al His­to­ry Muse­um is deeply iron­ic, since it dev­as­tates wildlife and the envi­ron­ment around the world through the extrac­tion and pro­duc­tion of ever more oil and gas.

Today’s action comes hard on the heels of the release of Shel­l’s 2006 finan­cial fig­ures, doc­u­ment­ing the 13 bil­lions of pounds made at the expense of peo­ple and the plan­et. Shell’s activ­i­ties extract­ing oil result in major eco­log­i­cal and social impacts. Trad­ing 3.6 mil­lion bar­rels of crude oil equiv­a­lent a day, the com­pa­ny is also a major con­trib­u­tor to cli­mate change, which has been pre­dict­ed to wipe out a quar­ter of all species on the plan­et by 2050, and to dev­as­tate the poor­est regions of the plan­et (2). The extent of the threat was high­light­ed on Fri­day with the release of the UN’s Inter­gov­ern­men­tal Pan­el on Cli­mate Change fourth report.

For all these rea­sons, the cli­mate camp activists are call­ing on the Nat­ur­al His­to­ry Muse­um to end its oily spon­sor­ship deal with Shell.

As the black oil-like liq­uid has been spread over the glass cov­er­ing the pho­tographs, the activists have not dam­aged the work itself. As Dan Bak­er said, “This is not an attack on the work of the pho­tog­ra­phers. Shell does not deserve to have its name asso­ci­at­ed with their beau­ti­ful images.” A ban­ner read­ing “Make Nature His­to­ry Muse­um — spon­sored by Shell” was also unfurled.

Activist Daisy Williams said, “This action sheds light on the ugly stain that cov­ers this exhi­bi­tion as a result of the Muse­um’s col­lu­sion with Shell. We’re here to make sure every­one knows about this despi­ca­ble green­wash spon­sor­ship deal. With more pub­lic pres­sure, we can kick Shell out of the Nat­ur­al His­to­ry Muse­um!”

For high res­o­lu­tion pho­tos of today’s action, vis­it this image site:
https://www.theimagefile.com/?skin=2903&ppwd=ks8551dt&Action=_VC&id=59798

A short video of the Shell Oil Wildlife Pho­to­graph Exhi­bi­tion at the Lon­don Nat­ur­al His­to­ry Muse­um get­ting pol­lut­ed with sticky black stuff.
NHM_Shell_painting — video/x‑ms-wmv 12M

For inter­views call: 07913 299 852

And also today, on the occa­sion of the UN Inter­na­tion­al Pan­el on Cli­mate Change releas­ing it’s lat­est report ->

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Well done! Ten of us held a protest out­side a Shell petrol sta­tion in Aberdeen at the same time, with a large ban­ner and plac­ards, and we men­tioned the Lon­don action in our press release, too.

aberdeen_climatechange@yahoo.co.uk
http://climatechangecampaign.blogspot.com
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On 3rd Feb­ru­ary 07 the Cli­mate Change cam­paign­ers were joined by Rhythms of Resis­tance Man­ches­ter to raise aware­ness about glob­al cli­mate change issues. The event took place in the city cen­tre. Cam­paign­ers gave out news­pa­pers and leaflets inform­ing peo­ple about what they could do to make a dif­fer­ence and high­light­ing detri­men­tal gov­ern­ment plans regard­ing future ener­gy pro­vi­sion for the UK.

Rhythms of Resis­tance played draw­ing in spec­ta­tors who were then treat­ed to envi­ron­men­tal street the­atre. The atmos­phere was pos­i­tive and peo­ple seemed to engage with the issues.