Members of Italy's Last Generation
(Ultima Generazione - UG) group staged another act of civil
disobedience to highlight the need to tackle the climate
crisis on Saturday afternoon by pouring diluted vegetable
charcoal into the Four Rivers in Piazza Navona in Rome.
The act was linked to the" We Won't Pay for Fossil Fuels"
campaign to stop public investment in, and subsidies of, fossil
fuels, which are behind the greenhouse emissions causing the
climate crisis.
The four activists were subsequently led away by police.
Earlier this week six UG activists linked to the same campaign
went topless and blocked traffic in central Rome.
On Thursday six people sat down on a zebra crossing on the busy
Via del Tritone leading to Piazza Barberini with "Stop Fossil"
written on their backs, holding a banner saying "We Won't Pay
for Fossil Fuels".
In a statement, the group said that this week's deadly floods in
the northeastern region of Emilia Romagna were a dramatic
demonstration of how the climate crisis was having an impact on
people's lives.
"We go naked with our bodies, vulnerable like the planet," the
statement said.
Other UG protests have included splashing easy-to-wash-off paint
over the front of the Senate in Rome, the La Scala opera house
and the Vittorio Emanuele II statue 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.
In the light of such acts, the government has approved a
crackdown on art 'eco-vandals', with fines of up to 60,000
euros.
UG is part of the A22 network of climate civil-disobedience
groups in several countries, including Just Stop Oil in the UK,
Stop Old Growth in Canada, France's Derniere Renovation and
Declare Emergency in the United States.
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