Climate activists shattered 19 windows at HSBC’s (HSBA.L) headquarters in London’s Canary Wharf on Thursday as a part of a protest in opposition to the financing of what the group says is devastating local weather change that threatens the planet.
The feminine activists from the Extinction Rebellion group used hammers to interrupt the windows and pasted stickers on them earlier than sitting down to attend for the police to arrest them, a Reuters reporter at the scene mentioned.
“Despite HSBC’s pledge to shrink its carbon footprint to internet zero by 2050, their present local weather plan nonetheless permits the financial institution to finance coal energy, and supplies no foundation to show away purchasers or cancel contracts based mostly on hyperlinks to the fossil gas trade,” Extinction Rebellion mentioned in a press release.
A spokesman for HSBC mentioned the financial institution welcomed significant dialogue on its local weather technique however that it couldn’t “condone vandalism or actions that put individuals and property at threat”.
The financial institution mentioned it aimed to be internet zero carbon emissions by 2030 and to part out the financing of coal-fired energy and thermal coal mining by 2040 globally.
An activist from the Extinction Rebellion, a world environmental motion, holds a hammer in entrance of a damaged window throughout a direct motion protest exterior HSBC headquarters in Canary Wharf, London, Britain April 22, 2021. REUTERS/John Sibley
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“We have an ambition to be internet zero by 2030 and to deliver our financed emissions to internet zero by 2050,” the HSBC spokesman mentioned.
Extinction Rebellion desires to immediate a wider revolt in opposition to the political, financial and social buildings of the fashionable world to avert the worst eventualities of devastation outlined by scientists learning local weather change.
The group, which introduced elements of London to a standstill in 2019, broke windows at the headquarters of (*19*) (BARC.L) two weeks in the past because it focuses on the finance sector.
“It’s time to face up and be counted,” mentioned Gully Bujak, 28, from Extinction Rebellion. “Doing this in the present day might land us in jail however we’re on the correct aspect of historical past.”
The activists referenced the battle of the Suffragettes who used direct motion to combat for votes for girls in the early twentieth Century.
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