While the COP28 climate change summit is being held in Dubai, in another part of the world activists from Extinction Rebellion (XR) Barcelona, ??local branch of the international movement Extinction Rebellion that defends the preservation of the environment, and Scientific Rebellion have occupied the morning this Saturday the facilities of the European Parliament Office in Barcelona to protest against the “inaction” of Brussels to comply with the urgent green transition demanded by the scientific community.
The activists have accessed the balcony of the building on Passeig de Gràcia, where the headquarters are located; They have sprayed black paint on its façade, displayed a banner and chained themselves to the balcony of the building. Other activists gathered in front of the headquarters and blocked traffic. “Governments are complicit with large corporations, organizations that spend millions to influence governments with the sole objective of improving their profits. That is why we ask citizens to take initiative, since they are not going to do it,” he said. an XR spokesperson.
Activist groups are calling for a permanent and binding European Citizens’ Assembly to address issues as key to combating climate change as decarbonization and the energy transition. Climate CAs (ACC) are a participation tool that has already been implemented in other European countries. In Catalonia, an ACC called by the Generalitat has just started, XR says.
The European Union has great weight in global policies on climate change, both for its role as a major emitter and for its relevant role in determining lines of action. Despite this, activists denounce, “the EU continues to fail to comply with the warnings of the scientific community and the IPCC (Intergovernmental Group of Experts on Climate Change) about the need for an urgent transition.”
In particular, “the classification of gas as green energy and subsidies for fossil fuels are a clear violation of scientific recommendations,” both organizations claim. And they remember that the IPCC states that there cannot be new projects for the exploitation of fossil fuels to ensure that the planetary limit of 1.5 ºC of warming is not exceeded and to alleviate the most disruptive effects of the climate crisis.
On the other hand, the total amount of EU members’ subsidies for fossil fuels increased from €56 billion in 2021 to €123 billion in 2022, due to the energy crisis resulting from the war in Ukraine. “The EU’s political response has been to prop up the fossil energy model instead of turning towards the energy transition,” say activists. “We are not surprised that the European Commissioner for Climate Action, Wopke Hoekstra, who is leading the EU delegation at COP28, has been a director of the Shell company,” said a spokesperson for Scientific Rebellion.
