Politics
Cost of living crisis compared to Shell mega profits
Campaigners from Fossil Free London staged a protest outside a supermarket in Hackney on Sunday 24 May, to draw attention to the rising cost of living in contrast with fossil fuel corporations’ soaring profits.
The stunt involved two trolleys. One, pushed by a campaigner dressed as an oil executive, was filled with sacks of money. The other was filled with placards shaped like common food items. Each placard displayed the item’s current cost and the amount it has risen by. For example: “Orange juice, £1.79, up 130%”. Behind them, a banner read: “Shell profits. We pay the price”.
The protest comes as Shell’s first quarter profits jumped 115%. This is whilst UK food prices are set to rise by 50% since the start of the cost of living crisis, driven by climate and energy shocks.
Robin Wells from Fossil Free London said:
Big Oil are vultures. They prey and profit from crisis, war, and human suffering. And they pilfer from and collapse the earth systems the give us life.
For as long as the fossil fuel industry persists, humanity’s very existence is threatened, and life is all the more miserable. Because whilst Shell continues to profit, we’re all paying the price. And the cost is only getting bigger.
Stu from Fuel Poverty Action said:
It is unconscionable that so many of us are going without because we can’t afford the basic energy we need for heating, eating and lighting.
Meanwhile, shareholders are laughing all the way to the bank, and the government is letting them get away with it. £500 of our energy bill already goes to profits, and that’s set to rise if politicians do nothing.
That’s why Fuel Poverty Action is calling on the government to Make Green Fair campaign, clamp down on energy company profiteering, and bring down our bills by passing the benefits of cheap-to-produce renewable energy back to us.
Featured image via Fossil Free London
By The Canary
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