Extinction Rebellion campaigners hold 'corpse' protest inside Shrewsbury bank

Extinction Rebellion (XR) members set up a morgue inside Barclays Bank in Castle Street, on Monday afternoon with 'corpses' draped with shrouds and death certificates listing causes such as starvation, disease, heat stress and drowning.

They accuse banks of putting profit before wellbeing and "above life itself".

Barclays says it has a "three-part strategy" to turn its ambition to meeting climate change targets into action: achieving net zero operations, reducing financed emissions, and financing the transition.

Activist Kate Evans, 46, from Newport, said: “A new scientific report published in late October makes it terrifyingly clear that developing new oil and gas fields is incompatible with avoiding catastrophic runaway climate breakdown. Barclays are going against everything scientists are saying."

Jo Blackman, 59, an adult education tutor from Shrewsbury, said she was present as a "corpse" because "Barclays are responsible for deaths happening right now due to the climate emergency".

"Barclays is investing in reckless oil and gas projects that’ll take us into the extreme danger zone, when it should be turbo-charging investment in renewables and insulation. If you have an account with Barclays, please consider moving your money to where it can be part of the solution rather than part of the problem."

Outside the bank, XR members talked with locals about Barclays' role in "accelerating the breakdown of our climate, deforestation and destroying nature."

Members of the Shrewsbury Triratna Buddhist Centre sat on the pavement outside and meditated for an hour, to peacefully bear witness to the tragedy of climate breakdown and Barclays' "culpability in this".

Extinction Rebellion is calling on Barclays to end all funding of fossil fuels; and until this happens, we are calling on customers to boycott Barclays.

A Barclays spokesperson said: “We are determined to play our part in addressing the urgent and complex challenge of climate change.

"In March 2020 we were one of the first banks to set an ambition to become net zero by 2050, across all of our direct and indirect emissions, and we committed to align all of our financing activities with the goals and timelines of the Paris Agreement.

"We have a three-part strategy to turn that ambition into action: achieving net zero operations, reducing our financed emissions, and financing the transition. In practice, this means we have set 2030 targets to reduce our financed emissions in four of the highest emitting sectors in our financing portfolio, with additional 2025 targets for the two highest-emitting sectors – energy and power.

"We have also provided over £80bn of green financing and we are investing our own capital – £175m – into innovative, green start-ups."