Protesters disrupt U.S. fossil fuel event at UN climate talks

Indigenous and youth groups disrupted a U.S. government event at the UN climate talks Monday, criticizing the Trump administration’s policy of backing the extraction of fossil fuels, the burning of which increases global warming.

About 100 protesters stood up and began chanting “keep it in the ground” — a reference to ending the extraction of coal, oil and natural gas — shortly after the start of the panel called “U.S. Innovative Technologies Spur Economic Dynamism” on the sidelines of the meeting in Katowice, Poland.

As cameras swarmed around them, some of the protesters explained how their communities’ lives are affected by fossil fuel extraction. After several minutes, the activists left the room chanting “shame on you.”

The protest mirrored a similar action taken during a U.S.-hosted panel at last year’s climate talks in Bonn, Germany.

Preston Wells Griffith, a Trump administration adviser speaking at this year’s panel, said after the stunt that the U.S. will continue extracting fossil fuels going forward, including through hydraulic fracking, and warned against “alarmism” over climate change.

The panel’s premise — that fossil fuels can be made “clean” through innovation — stands at odds with recommendations from scientists that countries should shift their energy generation to renewable sources as soon as possible or risk catastrophic levels of global warming by the end of the century.