Five Greenpeace European Unit activists scale the 14-storey facade of the European Commission headquarters in Brussels and hang a 30-metre banner mimicking a hole burned through the building, revealing the Amazon in flames, with the message: “Amazon fires – Europe guilty”. The activists also used smoke machines and fake ash to simulate the fires currently burning in the Amazon rainforest, which look set to be even worse than last year’s headline-grabbing destruction.
European consumption of products that drive forest clearance makes the EU complicit in these fires and other forest destruction. The EU Commission is considering a new law to cut Europe’s contribution to deforestation, so Greenpeace and over 100 other environmental and social justice organisations are demanding that forest destruction products are kept off the EU market.