MEMBERS of the environmental campaign group, Extinction Rebellion (XR), took to the streets of Newton Abbot on Saturday, September 3, to march and then protest outside Barclays local situated in the town’s library.
Some twenty or so members of XR marched through the town before arriving at the Barclays Bank in Newton Abbot library in time for the banks closing time of 13:30.
Newton Abbot XR member Mike Puleston, said: ‘The aim of the action on Saturday was to again highlight the fact that Barclays are still the No1 bank in Europe and the seventh globally for funding all forms of fossil fuel extraction.
‘They are culpable of gross Greenwashing and are effectively funding the climate crisis as the Banking on Climate Crisis Fossil Fuel Finance Report 2022 says Any bank supporting any company that is expanding fossil fuels is driving climate chaos.
‘On Saturday we have had 20 plus local activists come together to engage with the people of Newton Abbot to discuss and inform about the need to transform urgently to a greener economy, given Greenhouse gas emissions are due to steeply increase not decrease in the next few years.’
‘Once again as in our previous actions last year we are finding people in the street are extremely concerned about the future of generations of people to come living on a planet that is becoming less inhospitable to all forms of life as each year passes, we actually had a few people join our procession today and thanking us for our actions.
‘On Monday a new PM was announced, Liz Truss, who has a record of denouncing green initiatives and recently said she finds solar farms ugly, is an advocate of fracking, and supports more licensing of gas and oil fields in the North Sea – in effect this is short term madness. All efforts and financing has to go into renewable energy production, time is running out!’
A Barclays spokesperson said: ‘We are determined to play our part in addressing the urgent and complex challenge of climate change.
‘In March 2020 we were one of the first banks to set an ambition to become net zero by 2050, across all of our direct and indirect emissions, and we committed to align all of our financing activities with the goals and timelines of the Paris Agreement.
‘We have a three-part strategy to turn that ambition into action: achieving net zero operatiozns, reducing our financed emissions, and financing the transition. In practice, this means we have set 2030 targets to reduce our financed emissions in four of the highest emitting sectors in our financing portfolio, with additional 2025 targets for the two highest-emitting sectors – energy and power.
‘We have also provided over £60bn of green financing and we are investing our own capital – £175m – into innovative, green start-ups.’