Essay by Eric Worrall

Another pathetic green attack on Western heritage, this time a fountain in Rome which was built in the late 1600s.

Last generation, in the fountain of the Four Rivers in Piazza Navona thrown charcoal: ‘Future as black as water’

by Ester Palma

Charcoal in the Fountain of the Four Rivers in Piazza Navona: Last generation returns to attack the Roman artistic heritage. At 15 four activists linked to the ‘Let’s not pay for the fossil’ campaign, promoted by the assault environmental group. After the blockades of cars on the Gra and the naked and chained demonstration in via del Tritone, the activists poured vegetable charcoal diluted in the water of the precious baroque work designed by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, to ‘to raise the alarm on the black future that awaits humanity and that is already manifesting itself with increasingly frequent droughts and floods’. In the evening, the Minister of Culture Gennaro Sangiuliano went to Piazza Navona: ‘I carried out an inspection to check the conditions of the fountain of the Four Rivers, today targeted by an action of the eco-vandals‘.

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Read more: https://roma.corriere.it/notizie/cronaca/23_maggio_06/ultima-generazione-nella-fontana-dei-quattro-fiumi-in-piazza-navona-gettato-carbone-vegetale-futuro-nero-come-l-acqua-3470063c-4811-4d67-b11b-30135335dxlk.shtml

This story reminds me of a horrible story I once heard, about a western tourist who was raped in New Guinea. The attackers cut off one of her fingers, so whenever she looked at her hand, she would remember the snarling faces of her attackers, their cruelty and mockery of her distress and pain.

Those eco-vandals wanted to permanently mark a piece of our a precious heritage, just as the rapists wanted to mark the body of that poor woman.

To be fair the eco-vandals didn’t try to hurt anyone, but this need to make a mark, to leave a permanent scar, seems disturbingly similar.

I doubt these extreme acts of vandalism are raising sympathy for climate action.