This morning CAMSOL masqueraded as Sustainability Manager for the London Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (LOCOG) in order to highlight their unethical decision to make BP Sustainability Partner for the London 2012 Olympics. The story was picked up by several media outlets, including City AM and LBC radio, who ran a live interview with us.

In taking action against BP's role as Sustainability Partner for the London 2012 Olympics, we are standing up for those suffering as a direct result of BP's unsustainable practices across the world. Catastrophes such as the Deepwater Horizon spill are still having immense economic and health impacts for those living on the Gulf of Mexico coast and projects such as the Alberta tar sands have devastated indigenous communities and wreaked havoc with the local ecosystem. In addition to this, BP's closure of its solar sector demonstrates a clear shift away from renewable energy development and back towards their core business of unsustainable fossil-fuel extraction.

Climate change is already occurring on a global scale, the growing frequency of extreme weather are the most obvious example of how millions of people are being affected, and the continued use and expansion of fossil fuels is the number one cause. The most recent research on climate change indicates that continuing business as usual is very likely to lead to a catastrophic rise in temperature.

Harry Broadbent, from CAMSOL, said: "Choosing BP as Sustainability Partner is like choosing a paedophile to be head of a primary school. Their current business plan of increasing the supply of fossil fuels from dirtier and dirtier sources, such as the tar sands, would lead us to a rise in temperature of 6 degrees – which would spell the end of life as we know it. LOCOG clearly named its Sustainability Partners purely on the basis of who wrote the biggest cheque."

LOCOG have demonstrated a clear disregard for any ethical concerns in their election of Sustainability Partners, and BP is just one example of this. It is demonstrative of the power of corporate money to buy whatever image it chooses and deliberately mislead the public. Recent research has pointed to the positive shift in public opinion towards BP since its recent large scale sponsorship deals in the cultural and sporting sectors: 38% of those polled believe 'that BP had been getting better at working towards a cleaner planet'. This, despite it being less than two years since one of the greatest environmental disasters in modern history taking place off the Gulf of Mexico.

This action was not the first to be taken against the unethical sponsorship of the Olympics and nor will be it be the last. CAMSOL is joining groups across the globe in standing up to the power of big money and its role in driving man-made climate change.

Link: locog2012 spoof site