Bare-chested climate activists in Rome smear themselves with mud to protest fossil fuel use, evoke flooding

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German climate change protesters throw mashed potatoes on Monet painting

The Monet painting is the latest piece of art to be targeted worldwide by climate activists.

• Half-naked climate activists showered themselves with mud in Rome, Italy, to protest the use of fossil fuels and to remind people of the dangers of flooding.
• Last week, severe flooding led to the deaths of 14 people and caused severe property damaged in northern Italy.
• A series of attention-grabbing public protests have been staged by activists across Italy, including demonstrators who glued themselves to glass covering a Botticelli masterpiece.

A pair of bare-chested protesters smeared themselves with mud outside the Senate building in Rome on Tuesday to protest fossil fuel use and remind people of the dangers of flooding linked to climate change.

Police quickly removed the two. Since last year, an activist group called Last Generation has staged numerous attention-grabbing events in Italy, including pouring black liquid in the Trevi Fountain in Rome and gluing themselves to the glass protecting the Botticelli masterpiece “Spring” in the Uffizi Galleries in Florence, to highlight the harm that fossil fuels cause to the environment and its role in global warming.

The activists used mud to remind people of last week’s severe flooding in the Emilia-Romagna region of northern Italy, where 21 rivers overran their banks and hundreds of mudslides were triggered by a heavy concentration of downpours on rain-parched land.

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Climate activists shower themselves with mud in front of the Senate building in Rome, Italy, on May 23, 2023. (Cecilia Fabiano/LaPresse via AP)

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The flooding killed at least 14 people, destroyed farms and businesses, inundated houses, isolated hamlets and led to the evacuation of 36,000 people.

Meteorologists and other experts said the flooding was part of climate change phenomena that include long stretches of drought punctuated by extremely heavy and concentrated rainfall that can’t be absorbed by parched terrain.