A film about some shenanigans about a film. Welcome to post modernism.

If this won an Oscar, I’d want to thank my climby friends, the oil barrel luggers, the bright spark who projected onto Kingsnorth, all the flashmobbers, the stickerer, the stickerer makers, and of course, my mother, it being Mother’s day. Thanks mum. x x

(Enjoy.)

Exciting news from Scotland as everyone’s favourite poster-children of the environmentally-minded revolution (if that makes sense) Plane Stupid join the stupid fun, hanging a banner off a carpark opposite Edinburgh Airport’s departures terminal. Spanish-owned BAA, the biggest airport operator in-tha-world, were told last week that they gotta sell three of their airports, and Edinburgh could be one of them. (Stansted and Gatwick have got to go, they’re allowed to choose between Edinburgh and Glasgow.)

Aviation is the fastest growing source of carbon emissions – and if we keep building airports and runways we can kiss a safe climate goodbye. A third of the flights from Edinburgh go to London, and there’s not ONE but TWO train lines from Edinburgh to London. Flying that short a distance? Definately: Stupid.

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Royal Bank of Scotland, Kingsnorth and Shell branded ‘Stupid’ in series of actions.

Thursday 19th March 2009: Groups inspired by the film ‘The Age of Stupid’ have staged a series of audacious actions to highlight the ‘Stupid’ and ‘Not Stupid’ of Britain.

In a wave of protests, Shell, BP and Esso had ‘Stupid’ oil drums delivered to their petrol stations across London. Earlier this week Shell withdrew investment from clean wind and solar power. Last night, the headquarters of largely state-owned Royal Bank of Scotland, which continues to be a primary financier of the fossil fuels industry, was stickered with ‘Stupid’ stickers, while Kingsnorth Power Station, which has become a symbol of the government’s equivocation over environmental issues, had ‘Stupid Stupid Stupid’ projected onto it.

Wednesday saw climbers scaling one of the U.K’s highest wind turbines to display a banner reading ‘Not Stupid’. The actions culminated today with ‘Not Stupid’ flashmobs at Eurostar terminals in Paris and London, and at Manchester Piccadilly station.

One of those involved with this week’s protests, Gemma Waite, said: “Everywhere we look, there’s climate stupidity. But it doesn’t have to be that way – we can solve the problem if we want to and we act quickly enough. The message we’re getting from the climate scientists is that we don’t have time to mess around. We’ve got to get on with it.”

Having seen ‘The Age of Stupid’ at last year’s Climate Camp at Kingsnorth in Kent, members of the audience planned the events to echo the message of the film, which describes the need for urgent and direct action to avert climate catastrophe.

Last week climate scientists gathered in Copenhagen also lent their support to urgent action on climate change, warning that unless immediate and ambitious action is taken, we will face abrupt or irreversible shifts in the climate which would be near-impossible to adapt to.

Another protestor, Sam Elliott, said “I was inspired to do something by seeing ‘The Age of Stupid’ at climate camp. The police may have warned of a ‘summer of rage’, but the only anger we feel is towards a political system which has so spectacularly failed to deal with the problem of climate change. As the impacts of climate change become more and more obvious, we’re definitely going to see more direct action against those causing the problem.”

PHOTOS: Are available on Flickr at http://www.flickr.com/photos/cleverphotos They show climbers scaling the wind turbine, projections of ‘Stupid’ onto the side of Kingsnorth power station, oil barrels labelled ‘stupid’ at petrol stations, and flashmobs at London, Manchester and Paris railway stations.

VIDEO: A press reel of the actions is available.

INTERVIEWS are available with protestors.

More details and live updates are available on http://clevercrew.wordpress.com

Ends.

EDITOR’S NOTES

The actions are:

Yesterday climbers scaled a wind turbine to drop a ‘Not Stupid’ banner.
Last night saw RBS stickered, oil barrels delivered to Esso, BP and Shell petrol stations, and ‘Stupid Stupid Stupid’ projected onto the side of Kingsnorth power station.
Today saw pro-rail flashmobs at London St Pancras, Manchester Piccadilly and Paris Gare du Nord.
The Age of Stupid premiered last saturday. It opens in cinemas tomorrow.

You’ll have probably heard about Kingsnorth power station by now. The decision over whether to build a new coal-fired power station on the site has become a symbol of the Government’s dithering over environmental issues. Will they or won’t they?

Well let’s hope they don’t, because a new coal fired power station at Kingsnorth would be stupidity of the highest order. That’s why some clever souls projected the words ‘stupid’ onto the side of the existing power station last night. Sums it up pretty well.

Don’t we basically own the Royal Bank of Scotland these days? Cos if we do, surely we should be managing it a bit better. The bank used to like to proclaim itself as ‘The Oil and Gas Bank’. They’re a bit quieter about that these days – bad PR, you know, to be too closely associated with destroying the planet – but they continue to provide finance to corporations that get rich by helping heat up the atmosphere.

Last night someone decided that executives going in and out of the bank needed a little reminder to choose to be smart about not trashing the planet. For more on RBS’s links with the dirty, dirty fossil fuels industry, check out the Carbon Web

We took an oil barrel, painted the word ‘stupid’ on the side of it, and took it for a tour of some local petrol stations. That’s because companies that rely on fossil fuels to make their money, who aren’t looking for cleaner, less environmentally damaging ways to power the planet, are definately stupid.

Take Shell, who a couple of days ago quietly announced that they would no longer be investing in wind and solar power. Instead, they’re going to make money by squeezing oil out of the canadian tar sands – basically the dirtiest way to get oil we’ve ever invented. Definately: Stupid.

A ‘not stupid’ banner flutters from the wind turbine.

It starts on a sunny day in March with two climbers scaling one of the tallest wind turbines in the country. Why, you might ask? After all, environmentalists are known for climbing on top of coal power stations, nuclear submarine bases, diggers, warplanes or …. But why climb a wind turbine?

When we saw the Age of Stupid at the climate camp at Kingsnorth last year it got us to thinking. After all, nobody likes to be called stupid. We don’t think that, as humans, there’s anything essentially dumb about ourselves. We have lots of good ideas, including lots of good ideas which might just help us fix the problems we’re having with the climate. So we wanted to draw a bit of attention to some of them.

That’s why the banner read ‘Not Stupid’ – y’see, wind power is one of the least stupid things there is. It’s clean, it’s dependable (the old challenge that ‘what do you do when the wind doesn’t blow’ doesn’t really stand up – you use batteries, and manage the amount of power you use, and mix it up by using other renewable technologies alongside wind. It ain’to rocket science) and it’ll never run out. Most importantly, wind turbines create power without trashing the planet.

So – wind power? Verdict: Definately not stupid.