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Extinction rebellion demonstration in Falmouth
Photo: JON ROWLEY / EPA
Politicians meet, the streets complain: loud, colorful and non-violent demonstrated on Saturday on the occasion of the G7 summit in Cornwall, environmental activists for more climate and species protection measures by the leading industrial nations.
Their representatives only saw it on television, because the demonstrators were kept at a distance: The largest rally took place in Falmouth, the port city is around an hour's drive from the G7 summit town of Carbis Bay.
After numerous experiences with partly violent protests against earlier G meetings, it is again largely isolated and difficult to secure.
This is not a problem in Carbis Bay: The idyllic town of 3500 inhabitants on Cornwall's coast to the Irish Sea is characterized, among other things, by a striking lack of access roads - there are only half a dozen, including dirt roads.
In the port town of Falmouth, 44 kilometers away, it is hardly any different, but there is the press center for the media reporting on the summit.
Around 2000 Extinction Rebellion activists took part in a protest march here on Saturday.
The demonstrators carried banners with inscriptions such as "Deeds, no words" as an appeal to US President Joe Biden, Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) and their G7 colleagues.
"I have a grandson who is one year old and I wish for some life for him when he grows up," said 62-year-old protester David Oliver.
Therefore, he advocates measures against climate change and environmental pollution.
The G7 heads of state and government did not seem willing to take "radical" steps against the climate catastrophe, criticized the pensioner, who had traveled from the north-west of England to the demonstration.
Sas Joyce, 42, who lives in Falmouth, came to the protest with her nine-year-old son and six-year-old daughter.
The accusation that the G7 countries are doing too little for the climate and the environment was also expressed on Saturday by a protest by the development organization Oxfam.
Demonstrators with giant paper mache heads from the G7 heads of state and government lay idly in deck chairs on Falmouth Beach.
The protection of the climate and species is one of the central topics of the G7 summit, which lasts until Sunday.
The heads of state and government of Germany, France, Italy, Great Britain, Japan, Canada and the USA want to discuss, among other things, a project to put at least 30 percent of the earth's land and sea areas under protection by 2030.
The G7 decisions are important for the UN biodiversity summit in Kunming, China in October and the UN climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland, in November.
pat / AFP
