Greta Thunberg banned from Venice for pouring green dye into UNESCO site Grand Canal in protest
Swedish activist Greta Thunberg was banned from Venice for two days and was asked to pay a fine of £131 after she and her team painted the Grand Canal green by pouring green dye, which they claimed was not harmful. Greta and Extinction Rebellion activists were reacting to Italy’s opposition to including fossil fuel restrictions in a deal agreed to at the United Nations climate summit on Friday in Brazil.Apart from Greta, the 35 activists, mostly from Ital,y were also banned and penalised. The protesters claimed that the colouring agent posed no environmental threat and was intended to symbolise what they described as the “massive effects of climate collapse”. “I am even more surprised to see Greta Thunberg among the authors of this useless protest, who clearly aim – more than raising awareness about the environment – to give visibility to themselves,” Veneto governor Luca Zaia said. Extinction Rebellion activists also targeted rivers, canals and fountains in Milan, Genoa, Bologna, Padua, Palermo, Parma, Trieste, Turin and Taranto, to raise awareness about the “massive effects of climate collapse”. Venice’s canals are UNESCO World Heritage site and the administration called Thunberg’s act as “disrespectful” to the heritage of the city, its history.The COP30 summit in Brazil, in which the US is not participating, boosted funding for poor nations to adapt to a warming climate but mostly steered clear from mentioning the role fossil fuels play in increasing global temperatures. European Union Climate Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra called the plan “unacceptable.” “I am saying it with a heavy heart, but what is now on the table is clearly no deal,” he told reporters.
