Bethany Rielly
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SIXTY doctors, nurses and other healthcare workers staged a “die-in” outside JP Morgan’s London HQ today to protest against the bank’s investment in fossil fuels.
Members of Doctors for Extinction Rebellion, one of the groups of the climate activist network, said that they wanted to deliver a “public health message” to the world’s biggest fossil fuel investor.
The group handed a letter to JP Morgan’s Canary Wharf office which references the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s stark report warning that global temperatures will rise by 1.5°C a decade earlier than predicted.
Protesters held up a banner reading: “End fossil fuel funding,” while others sprayed “Code red” on the walls.
The die-in was staged to symbolise the deaths caused by fossil fuel funding, the group said.
Doctors for Extinction Rebellion co-founder and GP Dr Chris Newman said: “Climate change is at our door, and has entered our hospitals.
“JP Morgan is risking the lives of vulnerable children around the world, as well as my patients and my family.
“I hope that some of the workers in Canary Wharf will realise today how culpable their companies are and begin to work together to change their direction. Not in a few years — but today.”
Several doctors were “aggressively” removed by Canary Wharf security, Extinction Rebellion said.
Two doctors then glued themselves to planters outside the offices but were removed and loaded into police vans around three hours later.
The protest was part of a two-week action by Extinction Rebellion in London, dubbed the “Impossible Rebellion.”
A Metropolitan Police chief said today officers were acting “more swiftly” to arrest Extinction Rebellion activists in London as he defended tactics used against protesters.
Earlier this week officers were accused of using “increasing violence” against peaceful protesters after videos showed police using batons and dragging people off the top of a bus blocking London Bridge on Tuesday.
Defending the tactics, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Matt Twist said today: “Where we’ve seen cases of both very serious and totally unreasonable disruption looking to be caused, we have to take action and move in and make arrests.”
Mr Twist said over the 10 days, officers have arrested 480 people.
