Climate activist Greta Thunberg was arrested on Tuesday after she protested outside of an oil and gas industry conference in London, preventing attendees from entering the event venue.
The protest on Tuesday was organized by activist group Fossil Free London and was held outside a hotel hosting the Energy Intelligence Forum, a conference which joins energy executives with government officials. Thunberg and others blocked delegates from attending the event by holding pink umbrellas, as well as lighting yellow and pink smoke flares. Event organizers warned attendees that they should allow police to escort them through the protestors rather than attempt to cross the picket line themselves.
Video captured at the protest showed Thunberg, a twenty-year-old citizen of Sweden, taken into the back of a police van. Thunberg has been removed or detained in several other countries this year, including Sweden, Norway, and Germany, after staging climate protests.
“Behind these closed doors at the oil and money conference, spineless politicians are making deals and compromises with lobbyists from destructive industries, the fossil fuel industry,” Thunberg told reporters at the event. “The elites of the oil and money conference, they have no intention of transition. Their plan is to continue this destructive search for profits. That is why we have to take direct action to stop this and to kick oil money out of politics.”
London Metropolitan Police said that there were a total of twenty-one arrests made at the protest, including six who were arrested for obstruction of the highway and fourteen who were arrested for violations of laws against disrupting public order. “We have had continued discussions with the protestors and there have been interventions by officers to enable members of the public safe access in and out of the venue,” the department said.
Thunberg has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize every year between 2019 and 2023; she was additionally named as Time Person of the Year in 2019. She gained worldwide notoriety for skipping school to host climate protests in various countries.
