CLIMATE action group Just Stop Oil is planning to disrupt airports over the summer holidays.
The group has become well-known for blocking roads, disrupting sporting events and defacing artworks and monuments with orange paint, but over the coming weeks it is set to turn its attention to airports for a “sustained period of action”.
Earlier this week activists were widely condemned for spraying paint onto Stonehenge, with several stones covered in the substance.
Two people were arrested and later bailed following the incident.
A source within the organisation told The Times said a protest at Stansted on Thursday in which two private jets were sprayed with paint was a “prelude” to what is to come.
“This is just another way of us taking action in the theatres of life we exist in because we’re not politicians,” the source said.
“Private jets are obviously mental for emissions and most people would agree they need to stop. It’s a wake-up call for government that we need big radical changes. If this incoming government doesn’t get us on war footing then we’re not going to have anywhere to fly to.”
The campaign group has recently “moved the goalposts” for its campaign after Labour confirmed it would not issue new oil and gas licences to the North Sea.
Last week Just Stop Oil delivered letters to the leaders of every major political party, demanding they promise to sign a legally binding “fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty” to stop the extraction and burning of oil, gas and coal by 2030”.
After activists delivered the letter, a spokesman hailed “the UK’s next government in waiting” committing itself to no new oil and gas licences as a “major victory for anyone who cares about protecting our communities from the catastrophe being imposed on ordinary people by fossil-fuelled elites and corporations”.
The group threatened to begin a “new campaign of civil resistance” if the incoming prime minister did not support the treaty.
