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War and Greenpeace? Brits Left Bemused as Activists Launch UK-Wide Demos at Nearly 100 Bank Branches

16:13 GMT, 2 March 2020
© Chris J Ratcliffe
Demond Cureton
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Organised protests gripped numerous branches of one of Britain's Big Four banks, with demonstrators urging the company to stop supporting fossil fuels and reinvest in climate change initiatives.
Sputnik

Protests targeting roughly 100 Barclays high street branches have erupted across the United Kingdom, with activists accusing the bank of backing fossil fuels with billions of pounds.

Demonstrators from environmental campaign movement Greenpeace launched their actions on Monday morning by blocking entrances, forcing numerous bank branches to shut down.

According to Greenpeace, impromptu exhibitions aimed to highlight some of "some of the worst climate emergency disasters" since governments signed the Paris Agreement in 2016, citing recent flooding across Britain.

Barclays backed "polluters" with roughly $85b between 2016 and 2018, Greenpeace said in a statement, adding that the multinational bank will issue a statement in March in response.

The bank should stop "funding the climate emergency", Morten Thaysen, climate finance campaigner at Greenpeace UK said, adding: "Barclays keeps pumping billions into fossil fuel companies at exactly the time we need to stop backing these polluting businesses.

Greenpeace was shutting down branches to "shine a spotlight" on the bank's role in "bankrolling this emergency", he added.

He concluded: "It’s time Barclays pulled the plug and backed away from funding fossil fuels for good.

But Barclays currently works with the University of Worcester on a £2mn Green Asset Finance Fund aiming to help the institution build sustainability projects.

The university was the first in England to secure EcoCampus Platinum status in 2010 and was named 'Sustainability Institution of the Year' in the 2019 Green Gown Awards, Barclays said in a statement, adding that it had further plans for "campus-wide LED lighting, electric vehicles, charging points and solar panels", among others.

A Barclays spokesperson said in a statement on Monday that it recognised that climate change was "one of the greatest challenges facing the world today" and that the bank was "determined" to do all it could to support the transition to a "low carbon economy, while also ensuring that global energy needs continue to be met".

But the spokesperson added: "Greenpeace has a view on these issues to which they are completely entitled, but we would ask that - in expressing that view - they stop short of behaviour which targets our customers, and our colleagues, going about their lives in communities around the country.

The news comes after climate activist Greta Thunberg held a rally with up to 30,000 demonstrators in Bristol last Friday and was blasted on social media for ruining the city's College Green, with angry residents later setting up a fundraiser and some demanding that the organisers compensate to repair the historic location.

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