The former board chief is one of two Just Stop Oil campaigners charged with criminal damage after powder paint was sprayed on Charles Darwin’s grave yesterday.
The words “1.5 is dead” were painted on a tombstone in Westminster Abbey on Monday morning as Just Stop Oil demanded the government stop extracting and burning fossil fuels by 2030.
The painted words refer to news last week from the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service that 2024 will be the first year in history with an average global temperature 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels – the “safe” warming limit agreed by world leaders in Paris in 2015.
Just Stop Oil named Diane Bligh, 77, from Frome, as one of the protesters. Ms Bligh was chief executive of Reading Council from 1995-97 and before that worked as a housing director.
The Metropolitan Police said Ms Bligh and 66-year-old Alyson Lee, a retired teaching assistant from Derby, were bailed to appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court next month.
Ms Bligh said:
“If we do not work together to reign in the corporations and billionaires driving us beyond our means, humanity will not be able to adapt to what is coming. We are on course to lose everything, and politicians are doing nowhere near enough to prevent it. How many will we have to bury as a result of climate breakdown and who will be left to mourn them?”
