Origin, Santos targeted in School Strike 4 Climate Australia’s Adelaide rally
Young climate action demonstrators have marched from Hindmarsh Square to the Origin and Santos offices, calling for more investment in green technologies and for their peers to “rise up” and inspire change.
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About 250 young climate action advocates packed into Hindmarsh Square on Friday, later marching to the Origin and Santos headquarters to call for change.
As megaphones and loud voices cut through the CBD streets, one alfresco diner, pooch by her side, looked up from her magazine to give activists the thumbs up.
Other city workers covered their ears and gave the young activists a wide berth as they busily scuttled back to their offices.
The demonstrators, organised by School Strike 4 Climate Change, carried signs plastered with messages such as ‘I want a hot date, not a hot earth’, ‘No Planet B’ and ‘Protect our Future. Renewables, not gas’.
School Strikes 4 Climate Action Australia organised protests across the country on Friday, including actions in Sydney, Melbourne, Hobart, Canberra and Brisbane.
They called for the Federal Government to rethink its support for gas projects and young people to “rise up” and demand stronger action on climate change.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison this month announced the Federal Budget would include a $52.9m package to unlock supply at new and existing gas fields in five key basins.
“We don’t exist to exploit, corrupt and destroy,” Adelaide University student Tyberius Larking said.
“When the world is burning, we must burn too. We have woken and we will not go back to sleep.”
Fossil Free SA’s Guthrow Johnson protested Santos’s “greenwashing” events, such as the Tour Down Under – in reference to its sponsorship deal with the program despite “contributing to global heating”.
“Santos must not be allowed to use a prestigious and … iconic event to greenwash its activities,” he said.
An Origin spokesman said: “We’ve been growing renewables for more than a decade, and by the end of the year we expect around 25 per cent of our generation to come from renewables and storage.”
A Santos spokesman said the company was a corporate leader in climate action, aspiring to achieve net zero emissions by 2050.
“The International Energy Agency says that natural gas is critical to a lower carbon future,” he said.
Among the company’s projects was a solar-powered beam pump program in the Cooper Basin to replace diesel pumps and the installation of a 2MW solar array at Port Bonython.
A Tour Down Under spokeswoman said Santos had invested millions of dollars into Australian community initiatives and sponsorships.
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