On Saturday the 19 June a group of 20 activists, mostly experts and youthful persons, tried to occupy the Science Museum in London.

We did this in protest at the Science Museum’s determination to take Shell sponsorship of their new local climate transform exhibition “Our Upcoming Planet”.

An profession was not our to start with alternative of tactic. We had experimented with all of the “acceptable” ways. We signed petitions, wrote letters, named a boycott and held a protest outdoors the museum, but the director and board of trustees ignored us and continued to justify and excuse the sponsorship, leaving us with no option but to do extra.

I genuinely appreciate the Science Museum. I beloved it when I was a 9-calendar year-old who dreamed of staying an astronomer, who was over and above excited to get to sleep beneath a rocket. I really like it right now as a 17-year-aged biology and chemistry student, and it’s due to the fact I like it that I decided to act.

Simply because there’s seriously no justification for any museum accepting oil sponsorship correct now. We are in the middle of a local weather disaster. Life are currently being lost, households are remaining ruined, our planet is on hearth and these firms are the ones fueling the flames. An oil organization sponsoring an exhibition about climate adjust and options to the weather crisis is primarily wrong. 

The Science Museum shouldn’t be aiding to greenwash Shell’s status. It is a destructive and violent company, incessantly pursuing financial gain in the deal with of environmental catastrophe. It is complicit in human legal rights violations like the murder of the Ogoni Nine, and dependable for huge environmental degradation. Just considering that 2011, Shell has claimed 17.5 million litres of spilled oil in the Niger Delta, destroying and detrimental people’s residences and livelihoods.

Shell purchased to slash emissions 45% by 2030 in historic court ruling

The Science Museum’s director Ian Blatchford looks identified to paint a picture of a bogus fact. He emphasises Shell’s “commitment” to web zero emissions by 2050. But a Dutch courtroom not long ago dominated the oil company’s approach was “not concrete more than enough and comprehensive of caveats”, purchasing faster emissions cuts to align with the Paris Agreement.

On Saturday night time we saw how considerably the Museum is keen to go to safeguard this sponsorship offer. It known as much more than 40 police officers to arrest and clear away tranquil protesters. Younger people. Experts. The individuals that the Museum is intended to be there for.

The Science Museum stands on your own right now. Each by accepting oil sponsorship, something that so a lot of other cultural establishments now refuse to do, and by calling the police and refusing to facilitate peaceful overnight protests like the British Museum did in 2020 and the Tate in 2015.

We ended up there to produce a area of legitimate education about the climate disaster, not 1 led by Shell’s small business passions. We experienced prepared for a 24-hour livestream, with guests from all around the earth to discuss about local weather justice, remedies to weather modify and the quite genuine, pretty current impacts of the disaster on people’s lives. We desired to create placards, alternatives to the types integrated in the Science Museum’s exhibition which had been obtained without the need of informing the younger persons who manufactured them about the Shell sponsorship.

The Science Museum understands they simply cannot defend this sponsorship any longer. Their back again is versus the wall, and when you simply cannot justify some thing with words and phrases, you use power and threats. But we will not be threatened. We will not again down and we will not stop combating right up until oil is out of not just this exhibition at this museum, but all of them.

Izzy Warren is a 17-year-old local climate activist and member of Uk Pupil Local weather Network.