Climate protestors spray paint over Piazza Duomo statue in Milan

(ANSA) - ROME, MAR 9 - Two members of Italy's Ultima Generazione civil disobedience group on Thursday sprayed orange paint over the equestrian statue of King Vittorio Emanuele II in Milan's Piazza Duomo in the latest of a series of actions aiming to highlight the need to combat the climate crisis.
    The activists were rapidly stopped and taken away by Carabinieri police.
    Ultima Generazione said the action was staged to highlight the Italian State's ongoing investments in fossil fuels, which are the driving force of the greenhouse-gas emissions causing global heating.
    "The Italian government invested 41.8 billion euros in the extraction of fossil fuels in 2021 alone," said Ultima Generazione, which uses easy-to-wash-off paint for its actions of this kind.
    "We demand that this mountain of money be immediately taken from fossil fuels and invested in a just ecological transition, with measures that benefit citizens' health and the future of young generations".
    UG have staged many similar protests, including splashing paint over the front of the Senate in Rome, the La Scala opera house in Milan and sticking themselves to Botticelli's Spring at the Uffizi and the Laocoon statue in the Vatican, as well as blocking the Mt Blanc Tunnel, throwing flour over an Andy Warhol car in Milan, and throwing soup onto a Van Gogh in Rome.
    A Vatican trial for the activists involved in the Laocoon-statue stunt opened on Thursday. UG is part of the A22 network of climate civil-disobedience groups active in several countries, such as Just Stop Oil in the UK, Stop Old Growth in Canada, France's Derniere Renovation and Declare Emergency in the United States.
    "We won't pay for fossil fuels," said Riccardo, one of the protestors involved in Thursday's action, referring to public money being invested in fossil fuels.
    "Is throwing paint over a statue scandalous? "I say that the real scandal is the government's absolute indifference to our lives, which the climate crisis will destroy and is already destroying". (ANSA).