From the 13th to the 14th of September government officials and corporate representatives will gather at the Southern Africa Oil And Gas Conference in Cape Town. The conference is a carbon criminal gathering meant to accelerate the destruction of the planet and all life forms through the increased emission of greenhouse gases. One of the objectives of the conference is to expand oil and gas exploration in our oceans and key biodiversity hotspots. The karoo, an area where 40% of the plants are found nowhere else in the world is one of the areas earmarked for shale gas extraction (fracking). This is unsurprising given the fact that the ANC-led government has accelerated the Oil And Gas Amendment Bill and the Petroleum Development Bill, both of which expand the legal infrastructure for oil and gas exploration. Despite climate shocks like the drought (2014–2021), flash floods (in April 2022), Heatwaves in January 2022, and flooding in several provinces in February 2022 , claiming multiple lives and destroying multiple livelihoods, the government does not appreciate the urgency of the climate crisis. Civil society must unite and fight against the destruction of life and our planet for the benefit of a few corporations. We must unite to protect the life-enabling commons. Too many people have already paid the ultimate price!
In terms of global mean annual temperatures, July was the hottest month on record. This could be the hottest recorded summer in Southern Africa because of the projected El Nino. The Southern African region is already warming at about twice the global rate of temperature increase. This will lead to more rainbombs, tornadoes, devastating heatwaves and other climate shocks that will destroy multiple lives. We must stand united and resist oil and gas corporations and the governments they control!
United organisations and movements led a united protest action today, September 13 2023, outside the Cape Town International Convention Centre 2 to resist this carbon criminal gathering. The protest action was a Call For Climate Justice Resistance Against Oil and Gas Corporations.
This was a joint protest action by these organisations:
• The Climate Justice Charter Movement
• Feed the Future for Life
• Extinction Rebellion
• Southern African Faith Communities’ Environment Institute
• African Climate Alliance
• Save our Sacred Lands
• The Green Connection
• Project 90 by2030
We stood together with workers, the poor, unemployed and victims of climate shocks in
South Africa and the world to demand:
1. Ambitious just transition plans from all carbon corporations and polluters so we accelerate
the realisation of zero emissions and prevent a 1.5C overshoot;
2. No new investments in oil, gas, nuclear and coal;
3. All governments to withdraw subsidies from fossil fuel industries and redirect this money
to socially owned renewable energy transitions;
4. The UN establish an “End Fossil Fuel Treaty” which ensures fossil fuel corporations pay the
world a carbon debt for the harm they have caused, poor countries are compensated for a
problem they did not create, including poor countries with fossil fuel reserves, and the oil,
coal and gas industries are shut down in the next 10 years or sooner.
1.5°C is not negotiable. Our common future is in jeopardy and we are ready to fight for it.
People and planet before profits.
5. We demand the ANC Government place the country on a climate emergency footing given
scientific forecasts of a very hot Summer.
6. A Climate ‘Nuremburg trial’ for fossil fuel corporate executives for the crime of eco-cide;
the mass scale destruction of human and non-human life.
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