The UK Tar Sands Network and friends gathered this morning outside the Climate Week launch event at Lancaster House, to protest against its sponsorship by RBS, the UK bank that has been most heavily involved in financing the fossil fuel industry.

While Energy and Climate Secretary Chris Huhne was inside presenting awards for action on climate change, the protesters were outside, wearing badges saying ‘Love climate action, hate greenwash’, and handing leaflets to attendees that highlighted the involvement of RBS in financing companies involved in tar sands extraction. Tar sands has been the subject of international controversy for its impact on both the climate and indigenous communities.

Some protesters sang songs about RBS’s dirty reputation, and did the “oily Gaga” dance made famous at the Edinburgh Climate Camp. Meanwhile,  ‘Greenwash Guerrillas’ dressed in white biohazard suits detected dangerously high levels of toxic greenwash emanating from the building. Every attendee was given a flyer explaining why it is ridiculous that the UK’s biggest financer of fossil fuels is sponsoring a major climate event.

Climate Week has already been embarrassed by a report that was published earlier in the morning that indicated that RBS is the UK bank that has been involved in providing the most finance to the 20 biggest coal mining and coal-power generators in the last three years.

Sam Chase, one of the protesters outside the Climate Week launch, said:

“It’s great that people all over the country are taking action on climate change, but all these efforts are dramatically undermined when a huge financial institution like RBS is ploughing so much money into fossil fuel companies. Unless RBS is prepared to rein in its massive financing of tar sands in Canada and coal companies across the world, it shouldn’t be allowed to be associated with initiatives like Climate Week.”

Climate Week has also seen a number of groups either decide not to take part in the initiative, or withdraw from it as a result of the RBS sponsorship. Comedian and impressionist, Alastair McGowan, withdrew his initial endorsement from the event, saying:

“Climate Week is celebrating the successes of ordinary citizens and businesses in bringing down their carbon emissions at the same time as its main sponsor, RBS, is doing more than any other bank to undermine those self-same efforts. It’s high time RBS put its money where its mouth is, and stopped bankrolling the fossil fuel industry.”

Climate Week has also generated a lot of online controversy. A substantial proportion of tweets about the event express concern about the connection with RBS – and with some of the other sponsors, particularly EDF Energy. EDF runs two of the UK’s biggest coal power stations and is vigorously pushing dangerous and costly nuclear power as a climate ‘solution’. An online poll carried out by campaigning group People & Planet has also been satirising the Climate Week Awards by inviting people to vote for the Greenwash Coup of the Year 2011, and a number of groups have confirmed that they will be hosting events targeting RBS’s fossil fuel finance as part of Climate Week.

Some of the Climate Week award nominees have also expressed their concerns.  UKYCC were nominated for three awards and won one, but also released the following statement: “In the case of RBS in particular, we feel that sponsoring this event without withdrawing their heavy investment in Alberta’s massively damaging tar sands development is grossly hypocritical. We echo many others in calling on RBS to divest from this practice.”

http://www.no-tar-sands.org/2011/03/climate-week-tar-getted-by-anti-greenwash-protest/