Greenpeace scales Shell HQ in Arctic protest

Greenpeace has launched a counter-advertising campaign in response to Shell’s latest ad, which portrays a girl reading a book in bed by lamp light, with the caption ‘let’s keep the lights on when she’s your age’. A polar bear sits on the child's bedside table.

At 5am this morning, activists scaled the outside of a railway bridge next to Waterloo station to attach a billboard, facing Shell’s central London offices. As staff walked to work, they read the message ‘let’s keep the drills on, so the Arctic’s gone when she’s your age’. 

And more than 2,300 Greenpeace supporters donated to place a counter-advert in the Metro, Independent and Telegraph today, with the headline ‘Shell’s Arctic drilling plans are the stuff of nightmares’. 

Shell’s adverts have appeared in a broad spread of newspapers, and have been going up on billboards and train platforms all around the country.

Sara Ayech, Arctic campaigner at Greenpeace, commented: “We were inundated with calls from our supporters who were appalled by the hypocrisy in Shell’s latest ads. Shell just got dumped by LEGO for threatening to drill in the Arctic, but it’s back using kids once more to try to clean up its public image. Far from safeguarding kids’ future, its Arctic drilling plans risk polluting a pristine region and exacerbating climate change. And now Shell is even including polar bears in its adverts, despite the fact drilling for oil in the Arctic would threaten this unique species.”