on video | Greenpeace activists boycott Liz Truss’ speech

Two Greenpeace activists briefly boycotted British Prime Minister Liz Truss’s speech on Wednesday at the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham.

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“Who voted for this?” wrote on the banner raised by these activists, who were quickly escorted out of the room and applauded by Liz Truss’s supporters.

Greenpeace aims to “condemn” tearing up “the (conservative) party’s promises in 2019”, the NGO explained on Twitter. “The prime minister is on fracking, strong climate action, and environmental leadership. Who voted for this?” Greenpeace wrote.

Faced with an energy crisis, Liz Truss, in office for only one month, promised to speed up oil and gas exploitation in the North Sea. His government has already lifted the ban on hydraulic fracturing, a polluting technique for extracting hydrocarbons from oil shale.

It has also refused to tax oil companies, despite record profits it has made in recent months.

The UK is a European leader in the fight for climate, with a major law dating back to 2008 and a rapid transformation of its energy model, with coal accounting for just 3% of energy consumed in 2020. compared to 20% in 2013.

Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson participated in the COP26 climate conference in 2021 in Scotland, promised to make the UK the Saudi Arabia of wind energy and presented ambitious climate goals related, for example, to the end of petrol and diesel vehicles.

Liz Truss, who succeeded him, was not seen as particularly committed to the climate, underscoring her reluctance to take certain measures to support renewable energies or protect the environment.