26 March 2018
Peace activists supporting blockade

“Members of Auckland Peace Action (APA) will be on the front lines of the climate blockade on Tuesday to shut down this year’s Petroleum Summit,” said APA member Valerie Morse

“We believe that war and climate change are two sides of the same issue. On one side, the world is burning more and more fossil fuels while corporations continue searching for more oil and gas to keep an unsustainable economic system going. On the other side, this need for ever more oil and gas is fueling resource wars around the globe.”

“It is absolutely outrageous that a 'Petroleum Summit' is happening in the age of catastrophic climate change, and we’re not prepared to sit idly by while plans are hatched for more fossil fuel exploration. We’ll be taking non-violent direct action tomorrow at the blockade.”

“Oil companies are exploring and extracting oil and gas on the lands of indigenous peoples across the globe, protected by military force. We can see that clearly in places like the Tar Sands in Albert and the Keystone XL pipeline through Sioux First Nations territory in the US. We don’t like to say that the same is true here in Aotearoa New Zealand, but it is. In 2011, the NZ Navy was on the water to protect Brazilian oil company Petrobras while it did exploration off the Bay of Plenty coast.”

“Empires have long required easy access to cheap fossil fuels. The First World War was in part an imperial war for access to the oil reserves in Iraq and Iran that had just been discovered. This oil was essential for the British Navy’s conversion from coal. Nothing much has changed in more than 100 years, with the oil companies seeking out new lands to explore and drill.”

ENDS

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