Wednesday, July 31, 2024

UK

Free the Just Stop Oil truth-tellers

Recent climate disasters show that Just Stop Oil activists are telling the truth


The police are repressing Just Stop Oil (Picture: Just Stop Oil Twitter)

SOCIALIST WORKER
Tuesday 30 July 2024

A court remanded eight Just Stop Oil activists to prison last week for campaigning against the environmental destruction caused by fossil fuels. In jail they join Roger Hallam, Daniel Shaw, Lucia Whittaker De Abreu, Louise Lancaster and Cressida Gethin—who the state recently sentenced to four or five years behind bars.

These were the longest ever sentences for peaceful direct action in British history. Yet the last week underlines that these people have been persecuted for telling the truth.

Capitalism and its fossil fuel economy will destroy us if it’s not overthrown. Landslides, triggered by flooding and unusually heavy rainfall, in the south-west of Ethiopia in east Africa have killed at least 257 people.

The United Nations’ office for humanitarian affairs says the death toll could reach 500. A series of landslides linked to recent monsoons also hit India’s southern state of Kerala killing at least 49 people.

The landslides began last Tuesday crushing hundreds of homes in the mud. Scientists say monsoons are becoming more erratic because of climate change . A “park fire” that started on Wednesday last week in California in the United States has spread to be this year’s largest in the state— scorching an area nearly the size of Los Angeles.

These are all signs of ever growing and disastrous climate change. Nobody should be imprisoned for telling that truth and fighting to save the environment.

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