RTUK takes a no-compromise position and believes that only the complete dismantling of the fossil fuel industry and a shift to low consumption lifestyles will be sufficient to halt climate change.
Actions carried out by Rising Tide UK groups range from protests and street-theatre style events, to mass occupations of petrol stations, and blockades of key fossil fuel industrial sites.
They see the issue of climate change as directly linked to colonial-style economic domination by Northern powers, which have created a globalised economy that over-uses resources for the interests of the North, while keeping down equitable development in the South.
It shares the view of many other environmentalist groups that these market-based mechanisms are ‘False Solutions’ that allow Northern companies to continue to emit green house gasses while gaining access to new markets in ‘Carbon Sinks’ in the South.
[2] In 2007 Rising Tide UK adopted the ‘Peoples' Global Action Hallmarks’ as a way to clarify its position and values beyond its main aims of tackling climate change.
Rising Tide formed around a political statement written by a coalition of groups who came together in November 2000 to organise protests and events at the United Nations Climate Conference of Parties (COP6) in The Hague.
[4] The Rising Tide political statement defined the group's initial position, and allowed an international network to develop around its shared purpose.
In 2008, campaigning from Art Not Oil, Rising Tide UK and other organisations helped persuade London's Natural History Museum to cancel its "Wildlife Photographer of the Year" sponsorship deal with Shell.
Tar sands extraction has been linked to massive water pollution, freshwater depletion, increased cancer rates among local communities, land rights issues and the wholesale destruction of large areas of forests in Canada.
Ffos-y-Fran is one of the largest open pit coal mines in Europe, and operates very close to the houses of the local community in Merthyr Tydfil, which have been campaigning against it.