Thursday 9th May
3:15pm – 5pm
Department of Earth Sciences, South Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 3AN
Facebook event
This Thursday, Oxford University’s Earth Sciences Department is launching a new partnership with Shell, one of the worst of the Big Oil companies. They’ll be opening a new Shell Laboratory in the Earth Sciences department, in a ceremony presided over by Ed Davey, Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, Andrew Hamilton (VC of the University) and Alison Goligher (Executive VP for Unconventionals at Shell).
We are a group of University staff, students, and alumni, supported by local residents and environmental and human rights groups. We aren’t very happy about the University’s oily friend and so we will hold a peaceful protest outside the Earth Sciences building. This will also include:
The Shell Laboratory Closing Ceremony!
Join us from 3.15pm outside the Earth Sciences building for a trip into the future. It’ll be May 2018, and we’ll be holding a swanky ceremony of our own to celebrate the closure of the ill-fated and unpopular Shell-funded geosciences laboratory.
Hear live apologies and feeble justifications from the Vice-Chancellor, the Shell Vice-President and ex-Secretary of State Ed Davey, as they attempt to explain why this terrible partnership was launched in the first place! Hear about how staff and student outrage over the last five years forced the laboratory to close, after it became clear that the department’s research into gas and oil-bearing shale was helping Shell to extract yet more hydrocarbons in a time of climate change emergency.
Will Ed Davey take responsibility for the cuts to research funding that pushed universities like Oxford into the arms of fossil fuel corporations? Will Alison Goligher from Shell apologise for the human rights abuses and environmental destruction in Nigeria, the Arctic, South Africa, Canada and elsewhere – the terrible activities that the Oxford partnership was helping to distract the world away from? Come along on Thursday and find out!
Whether your concern is climate change, human rights, corporate influence over research or environmental damage, please do join us to start the process of kicking Shell out of Oxford.
We’ll have leaflets to share, but if you wanted to make and bring any banners and placards of your own that would be amazing. We’ll be very visible to the delegates at the official ceremony, so think about what you’d like to communicate to them and get creative!
This event is supported by:
Campaign Against Climate Change
Greenpeace UK
People & Planet
Platform
Rising Tide UK
Tar Free Oxford
UK Tar Sands Network
World Development Movement