Youth climate strikers’ solidarity with oil workers in Rainbow Warrior protest, calling for a just transition

YOUTH climate strikers have staged a protest in the North Sea today [WEDS 21] at Scotland’s biggest offshore wind farm, calling for a just transition for oil workers.

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  • Three youth climate strikers, including Holly Gillibrand, hold a protest at Beatrice, Scotland’s largest offshore wind farm, calling for a just transition for workers and for the climate. 
  • The protest – filmed by drone – will see the group raise a huge 1,500 sq ft banner aboard Greenpeace’s ship, the Rainbow Warrior. 
  • Campaigners are calling for the Scottish government to engage with workers and take action to secure a successful and just transition.

Pics will be available here

YOUTH climate strikers have staged a protest in the North Sea today [WEDS 21] at Scotland’s biggest offshore wind farm, calling for a just transition for oil workers. 

At Beatrice wind farm three 16-year-old Scottish climate activists Holly Gillibrand, Lily Henderson and Dylan Hamilton hoisted up a 1,500 sq ft banner calling for a ‘Just transition for oil workers’.

Greenpeace UK is calling on the Scottish government to take action to deliver a just transition for oil and gas workers, or risk abandoning a whole workforce, as was seen with coal miners and shipbuilders in years gone by. 

Holly, who has been striking with Fridays For Future Scotland for three years, said: “The climate and ecological emergency is at its heart a social justice issue, so the solutions need to centre around the welfare and needs of people. It is so important that as young climate activists we listen to oil workers and have these conversations involving people from many different backgrounds and experiences.

“Unless we move away from fossil fuels towards renewable energy, we don’t have a hope of stopping this crisis. The people in power need to start treating this like a crisis instead of tinkering around the edges without disrupting business as usual, which is ultimately what we need.”

Campaigners are urging Scottish Government ministers to engage directly with workers, remove hurdles to retraining, and back up warm words with a proper specialist fund for energy workers. 

Morten Thaysen, oil campaigner for Greenpeace UK, said: “Scotland has the opportunity to drive forward this energy transition, and see its North Sea communities thrive by helping fossil fuel workers move over to sustainable green jobs.

“But instead, the Scottish Government is following Westminster’s playbook, and is complicit in propping up the destructive oil industry, while ignoring its key workers in the energy sector.

“This has to change. Oil workers and Scotland’s young people are united in wanting a brighter future. We urge Just Transition Minister Richard Lochhead to do his job, and listen to them.”

The Beatrice wind farm was built on the site of a former oil field, making Beatrice a symbolic site in the UK’s transition to renewables. 

Today’s protest is the latest stop on Greenpeace’s Just Transition Tour, in partnership with Friends of the Earth Scotland and Platform.

Greenpeace is taking a 13-metre wind turbine blade around Scottish cities, inviting people to #SignTheBlade in support of a just transition for oil workers. It has already amassed hundreds of signatures in Inverness, Aberdeen and Dundee, and MSPs Ariane Burgess, Mercedes Villalba, Joe FitzPatrick, and MP Chris Law are among those to have signed it. 

More than 12,000 people have signed an online petition calling on First Minister Nicola Sturgeon to side with Scottish workers and the climate, not oil bosses.

It comes after a Greenpeace survey of more than 300 Scottish offshore workers (with more than 600 UK respondents in total) revealed that workers face expensive, repetitive costs in the oil industry and if they want to access jobs in wind. 

Nearly two thirds (64%) had been forced to repeat training qualifications they’d already done when changing to a new employer, and workers were spending an average of £1,627 per year on training costs. An overwhelming 93% of workers surveyed were in favour of introducing standardised training – an “offshore passport” – for working offshore whether in oil, decommissioning or renewables.

Greenpeace’s next stop on the Just Transition Tour will be in Aberdeen, on Saturday, July 24, where the campaign group will host a ‘town hall’ style meeting at Aberdeen Harbour. The event will see politicians, union representatives and community leaders take part in a panel discussion about how to drive forward a just transition for the good of workers and for the climate. 

ENDS

Greenpeace press office contact: press.uk@greenpeace.org

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