Radical activism is back!

No more polite letter writing campaigns or timid statements of concern, this week environmental activists took action against a range of environmental foes.

On July 22 the European Climate Exchange (ECX)  website was shut down for 22 hours by anti-carbon trading ‘hactivists’ of Decocidio, a radical international environmentalist group, and on July 27 Greenpeace UK volunteers shut down 46 British Petroleum (BP) stations across London, England.

While the two organisations were working autonomously from one another they both called for the end of “business as usual” and demanded that corporations take “real” action to reduce harm to the environment.

Over the weekend the ECX site was replaced with a mock site advertising a “super promo – climate on sale: guaranteed profit!”

“In a public act of digital direct action, the ECX website was taken offline and replaced with our message in an effort to try to raise awareness about carbon trading as a dangerous false solution to climate crisis,” said one of the Decocidio hackers speaking anonymously to the Guardian.

The fake site condoned the carbon cap and trade system, describing it as a scheme that “generates outrageous profits for big industry polluters, investors in fraudulent offset projects [and] opportunist traders.”

The site also included a video, the Story of Cap and Trade, detailing flaws in this carbon reduction system. It was produced by the Story of Stuff Project, an American environmental organisation.

The aim of the protest was to “cause as much inconvenience, economical loss and image damage as possible, we deliberately tried to maximize the virtual damage,” added the Decocidio activist.

Starting at 5.30 am on July 27, teams of Greenpeace volunteers with names like “the pelicans” and “the sharks” – each representing a habitat threatened by the environmentally devastating BP oil spill – went around London and used a shut-off switch to stop the flow of fuel at 46 BP locations, reported Greenpeace.

“We’ve shut down all of BP’s stations in London to give the new boss a chance to come up with a better plan. They’re desperate for us to believe they’re going beyond petroleum. Well now’s the time to prove it,” said Greenpeace Executive Director John Sauven, speaking from outside a Camden station.

Activists adorned closed stations with signs that said “Closed. Moving beyond petroleum” and also set up a website with a live twitter feed where volunteers uploaded photos and video of the day’s events.

A representative for BP says the organisation only halted operations at 12 locations and called the action “irresponsible and infantile.”