Climate change activists gathered in Liverpool city centre to call attention to the 'atrocities' wreaking havoc on the Earth's natural environment.
Members of the Stop Burning Trees Coalition (SBTC), made up of groups such as Axe Drax, Biofuelwatch, Just Transition Wakefield, York and Leeds TUCs and health campaigners, united under banners outside Barclays on Lord Street today to protest the bank's funding of power generation business Drax.
The protest was organised for the International Day of Action Against Big Biomass, which aims to raise awareness of the environmental and social impacts of burning forest biomass.
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Katy Brown, of Biofuelwatch Liverpool, said: "We're targeting our local Barclays branch because Barclays is funding forest destruction, biodiversity loss, environmental injustice and climate-wrecking emissions through its investments in Drax.
"We don't want the wood pellets Drax burns coming through our port here in Liverpool - making Liverpool complicit in yet another problematic transatlantic trade. A recent report by Greenpeace found that Drax is fuelling environmental racism in the Southern US . Much of the wood pellets come from the Southern US, and the pellet mills disproportionately impact on poor Black communities."
Campaigners argued that Barclays is funding "forest destruction, biodiversity loss, environmental injustice and climate-wrecking emissions" through its investments in Drax, which is the UK’s single largest carbon emitter and the biggest wood-burning power station in the world.
Former Sefton councillor Ralph James said: "This is one of many manifestations of the environmental abominations which are going on where big money is concerned."
Student Cerys Broadbent, of the University of Liverpool Green Society, said: "The world is burning. We don't have much time and it's our futures that are on the line. We're being handed a planet which is toxic. I want to know my kids in the future are going to be safe.
"I don't even know if it would be responsible to have kids because of climate change. These are moral questions that my generation is being faced with because of environmental atrocities."
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 operations, 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.”
A Drax spokesperson said: “Drax’s sustainable biomass supports around 6,000 jobs in the North and provides enough renewable power to keep the lights on for four million homes, strengthening the UK’s energy security and lessening our reliance on fossil fuels. The world’s leading climate scientists at the UN’s IPCC say biomass is needed to achieve global climate targets and over the last decade Drax has reduced its carbon emissions by almost 100% using sustainable biomass.”.
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