Extinction Rebellion Demands BBC Improve Climate Coverage and Divest from Fossil Fuels

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As a renowned public service broadcaster, the BBC is expected to set an example for global media. And the issue of climate change is noย exception.

Extinction Rebellion, a campaign group becoming famous for its peaceful civil disobedience tactics, has submitted a letter to the BBC asking it โ€œto play a key role in enabling the transformative change needed so that we can face this emergencyย togetherโ€.

Campaigners are due to descend on BBC sites in London, Manchester, Sheffield, Bristol and Glasgow tomorrow to demand the organisation does more to โ€œacknowledge its public-service duty to recognise and act on the climate and ecological emergencyโ€, according to a pressย release.

The letter, addressed to BBC Director General Tony Hallsย says:

โ€œAs the latest IPCC report makes clear, the current threat posed by climate change to all life on the planet is immediate and unprecedented in the Earthโ€™sย history.โ€

โ€œSpeaking at COP24 in Poland, your very own David Attenborough said: โ€˜If we don’t take action, the collapse of our civilisations and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizon. The world’s people have spoken, their message is clear, time is running out, they want you, the decision-makers, to actย nowโ€™.โ€

โ€œWe see that the BBC, as a respected media voice in the UK, needs to play a key role in enabling the transformative change needed so that we can face this emergencyย together.โ€

Extinction Rebellion outlines eight demands, including that โ€œthe BBC to only allow think-tank spokespersons or lobbyists on-air to discuss the climate and ecological emergency whose funding is fullyย transparent.โ€

The BBC has been heavily criticised in the past for allowing lobbyists from organisations based in and around 55 Tufton Street on to its programmes without fully declaring their interests in climate change and Brexitย debates.

Extinction Rebellion is also calling on the BBC to divest from fossil fuels. The BBCโ€™s pension fund currently has approximately ยฃ26 million invested in BPย and ยฃ18 million invested in Barclayโ€™s Bank – a key fracking investor – Extinction Rebellionย claims.

Apologies

The BBC has previously apologised for allowing climate science denier and former chancellor Nigel Lawson to spread disinformation on its flagship current affairs show, the Todayย programme.

The BBC‘s complaints unit admitted an interview with Lawson breached editorial guidelines, and that the organisation accepts that the statements โ€œwere, at the least, contestable and should have beenย challengedโ€.

In July 2018, the BBC updated its editorial policy on covering climate change. The new policyย states:

โ€œClimate change has been a difficult subject for the BBC, and we get coverage of it wrong too often. The climate science community is clear that humans have changed the climate, but specifically how is more difficult to evidence. For instance, there is very high confidence that there will be more extreme events โ€“ floods, droughts, heatwaves etc. โ€“ but attributing an individual event, such as the UKโ€™s winter floods in 2013/2014, to climate change is much lessย certain.โ€

โ€œWe must also be careful to distinguish between the statements. For example: โ€œClimate change makes this kind of event both more frequent and more severe,โ€ and โ€œClimate change caused this eventโ€. The former uses previous scientific evidence to say โ€˜it is likelyโ€™ the event is the result of climate change, whereas the latter may be making an assertion without the proof to back itย up.โ€

Image: Ruthย Davey

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Mat was DeSmog's Special Projects and Investigations Editor, and Operations Director of DeSmog UK Ltd. He was DeSmog UKโ€™s Editor from October 2017 to March 2021, having previously been an editor at Nature Climate Change and analyst at Carbon Brief.

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