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PROTESTS

Climate activists throw paint at Milan’s La Scala ahead of opening night

Environmental activists hurled paint at the entrance of Milan's famed La Scala opera house on Wednesday in the latest a series of recent protests to focus attention on climate change.

Published: 7 December 2022 11:17 CET
Climate activists throw paint at Milan's La Scala ahead of opening night
Environmental activists said they wanted politicians attending the La Scala season premier to “pull their heads out of the sand” and face the climate crisis.(Photo by Piero CRUCIATTI / AFP)

The early morning protest came ahead of the gala opening of the new season on Wednesday night, with a scheduled performance of Russian-language opera ‘Boris Godunov’.

Five climate activists from the Last Generation (Ultima Generazione) protest group threw buckets of paint onto the facade of the building and inside the portico shortly after 7.30am, according to an AFP photographer at the scene.

Two people unfurled banners reading “Last Generation – No Gas and No Carbon”.

“We decided to stain La Scala with paint to ask the politicians who will attend the performance tonight to pull their heads out of the sand and intervene to save the population,” wrote Last Generation in a statement.

READ ALSO: Why are climate protesters glueing themselves to Italian artworks?

Police quickly arrived on the scene – where bright pink, electric blue and turquoise paint had splattered onto the sidewalk – and the activists were detained and taken away in police cars.

A team of cleaners from La Scala then began hosing off the building and the non-permanent paint appeared to have been entirely removed.

‘Last Generation’ activists outside La Scala on Wednesday. (Photo by Piero CRUCIATTI / AFP)

Last Generation said they were calling on Italy’s government to invest more in renewable energy and reduce carbon emissions.

“In order to avert the misery of its own people and safeguard people, homes and businesses, which are at risk from increasingly frequent floods and heatwaves, the government must act now,” it said, referring to last month’s landslide caused by torrential rains on the island of Ischia that killed 12 people.

Most recently, climate activists have targeted artworks inside museums throughout Europe in protests they say are designed not to damage the works but to focus attention on environmental disaster.

They have targeted masterpieces such as the ‘Girl with a Pearl Earring’ by Johannes Vermeer at The Hague’s Mauritshuis museum, Klimt’s ‘Death and Life’ in Vienna’s Leopold Museum, and Van Gogh’s ‘The Sower’, displayed at Rome’s Palazzo Bonaparte, hurling soup or other food at the paintings behind glass.

Last month at an exhibit in Milan, they covered a car repainted by Andy Warhol with flour.

Police officers detain environmental activists after they threw paint at the facade of the La Scala theatre. (Photo by Piero CRUCIATTI / AFP)

La Scala’s opening night gala is expected to be attended by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, President Sergio Mattarella and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

In light of the war in Ukraine, the choice of “Boris Godunov” – an opera sung in Russian that tells the story of an autocratic ruler and his people – was controversial.

Ukraine’s consul in Milan had protested the choice, calling it a propaganda coup for Russia.

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CLIMATE CRISIS

‘Extreme’ climate blamed for world’s worst wine harvest in 62 years

World wine production dropped 10 percent last year, the biggest fall in more than six decades, because of "extreme" climate changes, the body that monitors the trade said on Thursday.

Published: 26 April 2024 08:48 CEST
'Extreme' climate blamed for world's worst wine harvest in 62 years

“Extreme environmental conditions” including droughts, fires and other problems with climate were mostly to blame for the drastic fall, said the International Organisation of Vine and Wine (OIV) that covers nearly 50 wine producing countries.

Australia and Italy suffered the worst, with 26 and 23 percent drops. Spain lost more than a fifth of its production. Harvests in Chile and South Africa were down by more than 10 percent.

The OIV said the global grape harvest was the worst since 1961, and worse even than its early estimates in November.

In further bad news for winemakers, customers drank three per cent less wine in 2023, the French-based intergovernmental body said.

Director John Barker highlighted “drought, extreme heat and fires, as well as heavy rain causing flooding and fungal diseases across major northern and southern hemisphere wine producing regions.”

Although he said climate problems were not solely to blame for the drastic fall, “the most important challenge that the sector faces is climate change.

“We know that the grapevine, as a long-lived plant cultivated in often vulnerable areas, is strongly affected by climate change,” he added.

France bucked the falling harvest trend, with a four percent rise, making it by far the world’s biggest wine producer.

Wine consumption last year was however at its lowest level since 1996, confirming a fall-off over the last five years, according to the figures.

The trend is partly due to price rises caused by inflation and a sharp fall in wine drinking in China – down a quarter – due to its economic slowdown.

The Portuguese, French and Italians remain the world’s biggest wine drinkers per capita.

Barker said the underlying decrease in consumption is being “driven by demographic and lifestyle changes. But given the very complicated influences on global demand at the moment,” it is difficult to know whether the fall will continue.

“What is clear is that inflation is the dominant factor affecting demand in 2023,” he said.

Land given over to growing grapes to eat or for wine fell for the third consecutive year to 7.2 million hectares (17.7 million acres).

But India became one of the global top 10 grape producers for the first time with a three percent rise in the size of its vineyards.

France, however, has been pruning its vineyards back slightly, with its government paying winemakers to pull up vines or to distil their grapes.

The collapse of the Italian harvest to its lowest level since 1950 does not necessarily mean there will be a similar contraction there, said Barker.

Between floods and hailstones, and damp weather causing mildew in the centre and south of the country, the fall was “clearly linked to meteorological conditions”, he said.

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