Mitigation statement - Zoe Cohen, September 2022
I’ve voted in every Election I could since I was 18, but there’s never any box to tick to stop the funding of fossil fuels, to stop the endless focus on economic growth and profit above all else, to end colonialism and extreme inequality, or to protect what’s left of nature. There is no real choice – we’re all strapped into this flight to catastrophe, and the pilots are intent on going faster.
King Charles as Prince back in November 2021 said at COP26 that climate change and biodiversity loss pose an even greater existential threat than the Covid pandemic, and that we have to put ourselves on “what might be called a war-like footing” … “because time has run out”. He was right.
And yet Prime Minister Truss and her followers are intending to fan the flames of climate breakdown ever higher by approving 130 new fossil fuel licences. They are putting ideology, greed and power above all else. They are denying reality exists - that when you drop a cup it smashes - and that with every further ton of carbon dioxide emitted the earth’s atmosphere heats up for 100s, if not 1000s of years with irreversible and devastating consequences. And the UK’s Courts and Legal system is colluding with this death project.
So, this is me pulling the emergency cord. This is me saying as an ordinary person, a 51-year-old woman and Mum, I don’t know what else to do to try to make a difference, to my daughter’s future, everyone else’s daughters and sons, and to all the incredible species who share this earth. I have tried everything else.
Now more than ever it is vital as a woman and a mother to speak up, about the quiet, hidden, ‘slow’ violence being perpetrated by our Government and those who fund and cheerlead them. This is the violence of the keystrokes on the keyboard that writes the agreement to licence another oil and gas project, and the violence of a Minister’s signature to consent to a fracking project in a community who has been lied to for decades about the real consequences to them and their families of yet more fossil fuels.
Somehow this sort of violence is acceptable in our system – it’s even given names – like “business”, or “growth” or even “security”. But let’s name it for what it is, it is a conscious choice to do significant and deadly harm – harm to those alive now - starvation, drowning, disease, conflict and destitution for hundreds of millions if not billions of people who have done least to cause this extermination - harm to the unborn, harm to the plants, animals, air, water and soils on which we and all life depends.
That is what is going on in Westminster, in our name. By taking this action and persisting with my resistance I am withdrawing my consent. Our government does not have a democratic mandate to destroy our country and contribute to the mass murder of millions, potentially billions, of people around the world. By doing this I want to shatter the illusion that this is ok - especially in the minds of all women, mothers and grandmothers. We did not bring our babies into this world to have their lives brutally cut short, their food supply destroyed, their beautiful potential unrealised.
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I also want to call out the collusion of the banks, financial institutions, corporations, media, professions and ‘professionals’ who lead them, who in 2022 seem to somehow think it’s still OK to be profiting from helping to destroy all we love and our very means of survival.
Enough is enough.
So, I make a plea to All of you reading or hearing this statement. Do not be a bystander to this violence one moment longer. Commit now to joining me and many others in withdrawing your own consent, and coming to peacefully sit on roads and occupy Westminster from the 1st of October onwards. Together we will demand our Government changes path and meets its most basic of duties to protect its citizens (and by extension, our brothers and sisters around the world) and as a very first step ends the licensing and consents of new fossil fuel projects.
We are all on the edge of a precipice. Now is our time to come together and resist this madness and create the better world that our hearts know is possible.
Thank you
Zoe Cohen, September 2022.
Earth Scientist | Educator | Pro-Social, Environmental, & Economic (SEE) Reformist
1ySimilar legislation was passed under Jason Kenney in the Province of Alberta late 2019 or early 2020. The legislation was used to stop Freedom Convoy blockade in Southern Alberta as the law included blocking essential supply, so agriculture in that case. Controls that can be essentially imposed on anyone here, well, on anyone subjected to the laws of this province. Meanwhile, Alberta has an estimated $260 billion oil and gas site cleanup obligation outstanding from the oil and gas industry. And 1.2 trillion liters of oil sands tailings pond waste water that our government is looking to release into our waterways. Experts say the “solution to this pollution is NOT dilution” here. Similar to mercury, toxins will accumulate in critical species. This legislation prevents us from protesting at a time when we need to be outraged.
Geologist / Operations Manager / Owner PNP Operating Company llc
1yStop the Hate, and learn to love crude oil. You will feel much better and that scowl will disappear.