On the 2nd November, dressed in hard hats and hi-vis gear, our group descended on HSBC in Brighton to announce the imminent closure of the bank to make way for a new open-cast coal mine. We even had a lump of ‘dirty coal’ ready to go.
The protest was part of WDM’s Carbon Capital campaign and took place along with hundreds of others worldwide during Dirty Energy Month. We wanted to highlight HSBC’s role in funding £3.8 billion-worth of carbon-intensive energy projects around the globe, destroying the local environment and driving forward climate change.
In the Borneo rainforest, people had been compensated for the loss of their land to make way for the coal mine – to the tune of 1/2 a pence per square metre.
We therefore decided to compensate HSBC the equivalent amount for the loss of their branch, and wrote a giant cheque for seven pence.
It was only fair, after all.
