XR brings protest to the high street to highlight toxic bankers

Dying time: High Street bank Barclays are one of the biggest funders of environmental damaging fossil fuel industries in the world

There would be far less development and use of climate-damaging fossil fuels if the industrial schemes were denied capital investment by banks and big business.

And to highlight this, after days of protests in central London, Extinction Rebellion Croydon yesterday staged a protest outside Barclays Bank on North End Croydon.

Supported by other activists from Croydon Climate Action and Sustainable Thornton Heath, the protest was to draw attention to Barclays’ role as a huge investor in the fossil fuel industry.

It was part of a national protest by XR targeting Barclays and HSBC.

XR staged a “die in” outside the branch to share information on the bank’s toxic investments, which they would rather their customers didn’t know about.

  • Barclays is Europe’s largest bank funder of fossil fuels overall, by a 31% margin
  • Barclays is Europe’s worst funder of tar sands, fracked oil and gas, coal power and fossil fuels overall.
  • Barclays have invested £104billion in fossil fuels and £41.7billion into expansion since the Paris Agreement aimed at addressing the Climate Crisis in 2015.

More information about Barclays’ role in Climate Breakdown can be found here: https://sharklays.co.uk/

If you want to find out more about how your own bank measures up, you can take a look at https://switchit.money/


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News, views and analysis about the people of Croydon, their lives and political times in the diverse and most-populated borough in London. Based in Croydon and edited by Steven Downes. To contact us, please email inside.croydon@btinternet.com
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