Extinction Rebellion protests – live: Activists strip naked outside Barclays after police remove people glued to plants
Latest developments as they happen
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Activists at the Extinction Rebellion protest have now been freed from the plant pots, onto which they had glued themselves, only to be been placed immediately into handcuffs and taken to a police van.
Others stripped naked infront of a branch of Barclays bank in protest, behind a banner which read: “We are all vulnerable, stop funding fossil fuels”.
Meanwhile, dozens of medical staff, including doctors, surgeons and anesthetists, gathered outside JP Morgan’s headquarters in London calling on the investment bank to divest from fossil fuels on Friday, with a warning that failing to act now would make the planet “uninhabitable”.
Some protesters lay on the floor while others stood behind a giant banner reading “stop funding fossil fuels”.
Dr David McKelvey, a GP for 36 years, said: “We call on them to face up to the reality of catastrophe they are fuelling. Stop all new fossil fuel investments now.”
Police gathered at the Canary Wharf site and one nurse could be heard telling security “you’re hurting me, you’re really hurting me”.
JP Morgan declined to comment on the protest.
The action is the tenth day of the ongoing Impossible Rebellion, a series of protests by Extinction Rebellion and related groups on environmental issues.
On Thursday, activists from HS2 Rebellion, an offshoot of Extinction Rebellion, scaled the seven-storey Tower Place West building in the City of London which houses the offices of insurance company Marsh – linked to the HS2 rail project.
XR calls on people to join their demo tomorrow
Extinction Rebellion is calling on people to join their protest tomorrow in central London.
The group, which has been demonstrating in the capital for five days so far, has launched a variety of demos including a naked protest in front of a branch of Barclays bank today.
The March for Nature starts tomorrow at 4pm in Trafalgar Square.
Pyrenees glaciers ‘likely to be reduced to ice patches'
Europe’s southernmost glaciers will likely be reduced to ice patches in the next two decades due to climate change, Spanish scientists say in a new study.
It comes as the shrinking of ice mass on the Pyrenees mountain range continues at a steady but rapid speed seen at least since the 1980s.
The Pyrenees, marking the natural border between Spain and France, saw three glaciers disappear or become reduced to stagnant strips of ice since 2011.
In 17 of the two dozen remaining ice sheets, there’s been an average loss of 20 feet of ice thickness.
Their mass also shrank over one-fifth on average, or 23 per cent, in nearly one decade, according to the study published last week in the peer-reviewed Geophysical Research Letters. Its findings were announced to the media today.
The Spanish scientists blamed climate change for the retreat, and in particular a 1.5C overall temperature increase in the Pyrenean region since the 19th century.
“What we are seeing here is an advance warning of what may happen in other mountains, like in the Alps,” said Jesus Revuelto, one of the study’s authors. “Their glaciers have much more mass and entity, but we are showing them the way.”
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