Luton highlights devastation that war can cause to land, to trees, to crops, to all of nature

In the run up to this date, Friends of the Earth has been involved in a series of actions across the UK, often jointly with other peace/faith organisations e.g. the Quakers, PENGON (Palestine Environmental Non-Government Organisations Network). Locally, we decorated a tree in Luton town centre with messages of peace, and on Saturday 5 October some of us went to London to demand an end to war in the Middle East.

Explaining the messages, Luton Friends of the Earth member Lyn Bliss said: “We are calling for No Warming, No War. We want the public to understand that militarism not only kills and displaces civilians, but also fuels the climate and nature crisis. Militaries and a healthy environment simply don’t go together. Consider how wars and militarisation are often used to assert control over and ensure the continued production of fossil fuels.  Then there’s the catastrophic destruction of land, air and water from war and the use of arms. And of course militaries are an enormous source of carbon emissions  in themselves. This mustn’t escalate into a wider conflict.”

Another member, Brenda Slessor added: “Our sister organisation PENGON/Palestine Friends of the Earth  know this too well. The group has been documenting the environmental impacts of the horrific, ongoing Israeli attacks on Gaza, as well as the impacts of the Israeli occupation generally. PENGON report that half of Gaza’s trees have now been destroyed.  And in the past 20 years the Israeli army have uprooted more than half a million Palestinian trees in the West Bank.”

Climate activist Julie Furnivall explained why FOE decorated a tree in Luton’s town centre, close to Barclays bank (which has funded armaments to Israel).

“We wanted the public to understand that Friends of the Earth is about environmental justice. This means standing against injustice; the war on Gaza is a towering, historic injustice, causing appalling environmental destruction and loss of life. As we decorated the tree, passers-by photographed us and commented positively on the action we took.

However, we were aware that our tree decoration could become town centre litter, so we returned to George Street the next day to collect and tidy it away. We found, though, that somebody had already taken everything down, so we didn’t need to.”