Climate protesters in Italy on Sunday poured charcoal into the Trevi Fountain in Rome, turning the water black.
A video shared by the activist group Ultima Generazione (Last Generation) shows protesters climbing into the iconic fountain with banners and turning the water black. They were dragged out by police and arrested.
“If we wait any longer to act against climate collapse, if we wait to stop public subsidies for fossil fuels, floods like those in Emilia Romagna will become the rule, not the exception,” the group wrote alongside the video on Instagram.
The Emilia-Romagna region in northeastern Italy saw devastating floods last week that claimed the lives of at least 13 people and prompted more than 15,000 evacuations, according to the regional government.
“We ask to intervene at the source of the problem, to use the money given to the fossil today for ecological conversion and to secure our territory,” the activist group said. “Only in this way will we be able to mitigate the damage and avoid the worst.”
