ZURICH (Reuters) – Climate activists blocked streets in Zurich on Monday in an attempt to force the Swiss government to take “appropriate action” to tackle climate change.
More than 200 activists from the Extinction Rebellion group blocked traffic on Zurich’s Uraniastrasse close to the central train station, displaying banners that read “We’ll be back tomorrow” and “Homo sapiens faces extinction”.
Extinction Rebellion had invited people to the protest on its website and via social media channels.
“This is not an exercise, this is an emergency … Our life depends on the truth being told about the climate catastrophe,” the group said on its website.
“We’ll stop when the government takes appropriate action.”
Zurich police said the protests were ongoing and activists were still being carried away by police.
The protest comes amid a wave of civil disobedience by activists in Switzerland, where the climate is warming at about twice the pace of the global average and changing its famed mountain landscapes.
Police cleared climate activists from the heart of Zurich’s financial district in August after dozens blocked entrances to offices of Switzerland’s two biggest banks to protest against their financing of fossil fuel projects.
(Reporting by Arnd Wiegmann, Silke Koltrowitz and Michael Shields; Editing by Gareth Jones)
