Italy’s Ultima Generazione (Last Generation) group on Friday continued a series of road-block protests in Italian cities to highlight the need to combat the climate crisis, halting traffic on two major Rome highways in rush-hour traffic and causing considerable disruption for commuters trying to get to work.
The young ‘concerned citizens’ sat and lay down on the busy Magliana and Tangenziale Est roads in the capital, forcing traffic to stop, with banners saying ‘No Oil, No Gas’.
They created major traffic jams before police and fire fighters managed to clear the roads.
“We are sorry to cause inconvenience,” Ultima Generazione said via Twitter.
“But it is the only way we have left to get heard”.
Several Ultima Generazione members recently staged long hunger strikes in a bid to get Italy’s political parties to focus on the climate crisis, which has been manifest in Italy in many ways over the last year, including deadly storms and months of drought that caused massive problems for agriculture.
But the hunger strikes were largely ignored by politicians and the media.
So the group has reverted to staging road blocks, as they did earlier in this year ― protests that often caused angry reactions from the motorists affected.
Ultima Generazione is demanding the immediate halt to the reopening of decommission coal plants and the scrapping of new gas-drilling projects.
It also wants the government to take action to increase the energy generated by renewables in Italy by at least 20GW each year.
Ultima Generazione is part of the A22 network of climate civil-disobedience groups active in several countries, such as Just Stop Oil in the UK, Stop Old Growth in Canada, Derniere Renovation in France and Declare Emergency in the United States.
