Extinction Rebellion occupied the world-famous Walkie Talkie tower and sailed an iconic pink boat through the streets of the City of London on Monday 28 October. It was to kick off a week of mass protests in the capital and across the UK – under the banner of its Insure Our Survival campaign. The group is calling on the insurance industry to stop insuring fossil fuel criminals who are heating up the planet and flooding our homes.
City of London: Extinction Rebellion is BACK
An inflatable version of the boat that made its game-changing first XR appearance in Oxford Circus in April 2019 was hoisted on the shoulders of activists, holding smoke flares and wearing extreme wet weather gear, surrounded by hundreds of protestors.
This morning, groups of protestors staged a dramatic wave of insurance occupations across the City of London.
They occupied the lobby of the Walkie Talkie building, home to insurers Ascot, Talbot, Chaucer, Markel, Allied World, CNA Hardy, Tokio Marine Kiln, Sirius International, and Lancashire Syndicates:
They also targeted 60 Gracechurch Street, where insurers Allianz have offices:
Supporters of Scientists for XR wearing white lab coats entered the lobby of the Prudential Regulation Authority, the insurance industry’s regulatory body overseen by the Bank of England, on Moorgate:
The PRA could halt new fossil fuel projects – but they’re choosing profit over planet.
Activists from Christian Climate Action staged a protest inside 22 Bishopsgate, City of London – where Hiscox, an insurer that is refusing to rule out insuring the East Africa Crude Oil ‘carbon bomb’ pipeline, is headquartered:
At 20 Gracechurch Street, the offices of insurers AXA, medical professionals from Health for XR staged a street picket to express their serious concerns about the health impacts of the climate crisis that the insurance industry is enabling.
Stop the climate criminals
Huge lines of City of London workers formed outside the Walkie Talkie and 22 Bishopsgate as a security clampdown was hurriedly staged:
Protesters at all five offices handed out leaflets to arriving workers calling on them to be superheroes and pressure their businesses to get out oil, gas and coal insurance. They also delivered ultimatum letters to insurance CEOs warning they would face more actions unless they pull the plug on their fossil fuel clients.
Mass phone calling and email actions and social media storms by Digital Rebellion saw City of London insurance executives bombarded with demands from around the world to drop their fossil fuel clients, and pull out of ‘carbon bomb’ projects that are flooding our homes.
Insure Our Survival spokesperson Steve Tooze said:
Each day this week we will be telling a story about the terrible impact that insurers are having on the lives of ordinary people here and across the world by insuring fossil fuel criminals to keep digging and drilling for oil, gas and coal and heating up the planet.
Today we are highlighting the climate crisis-driven extreme weather that we have seen causing floods that have wrecked homes and farmland across the UK, as well as in Europe, the USA and the Global South.
We want to make clear the dirty trick that insurers are playing on us all by insuring fossil fuels that cause flooding and then charging us more to insure our homes – or refusing to insure them at all – because the risk of flooding has increased.
The City of London has not seen the last of Extinction Rebellion
He noted that:
The campaign has targeted 52 insurers and we aim to permanently toxify these insurance brands in the minds of the public and the business community by strongly linking them with the fossil fuel companies who are causing the climate chaos we all see getting worse every day.
But we will also be making an appeal to the insurance industry and the people working in it – to use their power to pull the plug on fossil fuels by refusing to insure new oil, gas and coal projects and infrastructure.
Tooze concluded:
Every insurer that declares they will do so will be instantly removed from our target list. Failure to do so will mean the risk of repeated visits this week, and in the weeks and months to come, until they meet our demand.
Major insurers Zurich pulled out of new oil and gas after our week of actions in February. Italy’s biggest insurer Generali went a long way to doing the same last week. Now it’s time for the rest to get on to the right side of history by following in their footsteps.
Extinction Rebellion will be staging another two days of protests and actions in the City of London before activists stage more than 30 actions against insurance offices and businesses in towns and cities across the UK from Thursday 31 October to Saturday 2 November.
Featured image and additional images via Extinction Rebellion
