NEXT TIME YOU wait for a bus in Hackney, glance at the advertisements on the shelter walls. One of the posters may make you chuckle — in a grimly ironic way.

The ads, claiming to be for the mighty Shell oil company and appearing also at other London stops, use spoof slogans such as “Shell: burning your future” and “Climate breakdown: we cause it”. Pictures of floods and wildfires complete the sendup of the energy giant’s role in climate change.  

Shell Must Fall has claimed credit for the satirical posters, but it was Fossil Free London, another activist group campaigning against oil companies, that alerted Loving Dalston to the ads.

Joanna Warrington, of FFL, said: “We’re hurtling into a climate crisis and a cost-of-living scandal — and Shell is pouring fuel on the fire. It made £10 billion in profit in the last three months alone and showered its shareholders with unearned cash.… we’re running out of time to tackle the climate crisis. 

“We had to take on the corporations driving us to disaster for their grotesque profits.”

Shell told Loving Dalston that it was aiming to become a net-zero emissions business by 2050, adding: “We are also… planning to invest between 20 and 25 billion pounds in the UK energy system over the next decade.”

David Altheer 030822

* Backstory: Hackney drops its costly chauffeured limo; How Hackney and other councillors benefit from LTNs; Councillor sprouts tree scheme for Hackney; Bollards! Keeping cars off a Hackney path; Goodbye glyphosate

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* Pictures: © Fossilfree London

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