With climate crisis protestors causing chaos in central London, they managed to cause limited upset in Lisbon by storming a live television broadcast and interrupting energy minister João Pedro Matos Fernandes as he addressed the “European Climate Summit” at the Ritz Four Seasons Hotel.
Said activists their action has been prompted “by the complicit silence by the majority of Portuguese media regarding the climate emergency in which we live”
Activist João Camargo filmed the intervention that burst into live recording studios of CMTV, while the video of how energy minister Matos Fernandes coped with protestors has already been uploaded onto Youtube (click here).
Said protestors, the action at the Ritz Four Seasons was designed to show that the event was “just another greenwashing operation”.
Activists accuse politicians and oil companies of paying lip-service to the climate crisis while pressing ahead with their own calamitous agendas.
Said a statement by Extinction Rebellion Portugal uploaded online today: “As usual, today’s event is giving the stage to Shell, one of the most widely-known fossil fuel extractors, and to HSBC, a bank that insists on funding extraction projects, among other extracting and funding organisations.
“The Portuguese Government has shown striking inertia when facing the existential threat ahead of us. An attitude reinforced by the presence today of the Portuguese Minister for the Environment and Energy Transition, João Matos Fernandes, when he should be the first to advocate the fight against the destruction of the Earth”.
As Easter approaches and Portugal has spent millions promoting itself as the most welcoming of European touristic destinations, the lid appears to be coming off national ‘discontent with the system’ with a blast.
Meantime, the Extinction Rebellion movement worldwide continues to make headlines.
