Five people have been arrested at an oil industry protest attended by Greta Thunberg in London on Tuesday morning.
The Swedish activist spoke outside the InterContinental London Park Lane hotel, near Hyde Park, during the start of the Energy Intelligence Forum.
The three-day event will see leaders of the world’s oil and gas giants, including Shell and Total, gather with UK financers and ministers.
But Fossil Free London, a group which “organises against fossil fuel companies and their funders”, is set on disrupting what it calls the “Oscars of Oil” with its Oily Money Out campaign – a drive to remove money from the oil industry “from our politics and our lives”.
Greta, 20, told journalists at the protest: “It is not a coincidence that we are speeding in the wrong direction. The people in power are knowingly leading us to the end of a precipice.
“They know very well the invaluable things they are sacrificing in order for them to continue squeezing out profits from a dying planet.
“We cannot let this continue. The elites at an oil and money conference have no intention of transition. Their plan is to continue this destructive search for profits. That is why we have to take direct action – to stop this and to kick oily money out of politics.
“We have no other option but to put our bodies outside of this conference and physically disrupt.”
Five people were arrested on suspicion of obstructing a highway.
Fossil Free London has planned three days of protest action against the conference.
Director Robin Wells previously said: “The main purpose of protesting this forum is to make it clear that the industry is not welcome to come to our city, is not welcome to schmooze our politicians, is not welcome to profit at the expense of the collective survival and the health of the one home that we all share.”
The Energy Intelligence Forum describes the event as an opportunity for “decision-makers, thought-leaders and innovators to debate how a divided world powers the planet in a way that is reliable, affordable and clean”.
It has also said that the industry is operating amid “deep fractures in global geopolitics, countries positioning their climate ambitions in contrasting ways and energy companies mapping divergent paths to achieve sustainable transitions”.
