“MIXED MESSAGES”
Supporters have been already gathered exterior courtroom on Thursday when Thunberg arrived round an hour earlier than the ten.00am begin of her trial.
They held giant yellow indicators studying “fossil free London” and “local weather protest just isn’t against the law” as Thunberg, sporting a gray coat, and her fellow defendants made their means by the group.
Maja Darlington, campaigner at Greenpeace UK, mentioned the activists have been on trial “for peacefully protesting” whereas oil executives have been “celebrating making billions from promoting climate-wrecking fossil fuels”.
“The prosecution of Greta and different peaceable protesters displays a authorities that cares extra about bolstering the earnings of oil bosses than preventing for a habitable future for all of us,” she added.
The Conservative authorities’s reversals on its pledges to fight local weather change have angered campaigners.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has postponed a ban on the sale of petrol and diesel vehicles and introduced plans to grant new licences to drill for oil and gasoline within the North Sea.
The British citizens, which votes in a normal election this 12 months, is dealing with an inflation-fuelled cost-of-living disaster.
On Monday, the UK’s unbiased advisory physique on local weather technique expressed concern that the federal government was sending out “blended messages” that have been tarnishing its worldwide affect on the problem.
Thunberg, who got here to worldwide consideration as a 15-year-old by staging college strikes in her native Sweden, recurrently takes half in such demonstrations.
She was fined in October for blocking the port of Malmo in Sweden, just a few months after being forcibly eliminated by police throughout an illustration in opposition to the usage of coal in Germany.
She additionally joined a march final weekend in southern England to protest in opposition to the growth of Farnborough airport, primarily utilized by personal jets.
