PARIS (Reuters) – Activists disrupted a green finance summit in Paris on Tuesday, saying that French President Emmanuel Macron had failed to get serious on investing in combating climate change.
Macron’s government says it is committed to meeting its climate targets, including going carbon neutral by 2050, in line with the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change.
Protesters intervened shortly after a speech by French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire, with one seen holding a banner reading “Macron: champion of fossil fuel finance”, images published online by action group Les Amis de la Terre showed.
A French court this month ordered the state to honour its promises on climate change, insisting it take measures to repair ecological damage and to prevent a further increase of carbon emissions by the end of December 2022 at the latest.
In a nod to Greta Thunberg, the protesters complained of the “blah, blah” rhetoric they said was coming from Macron’s government, echoing the words of the environmental campaigner at a pre-COP26 event in Italy last month.
Macron’s government, which is due to attend the COP26 meeting in Glasgow, Scotland next month, was fined 10 million euros ($12 million) by France’s highest administrative court in August for failing to improve air quality.
(Reporting by Sudip Kar-Gupta; Writing by Richard Lough; Editing by Alexander Smith)
