Known as a major traffic circle and home to one of Paris’s most important monuments, the Place de l’Étoile was sprayed with a strange orange color last Friday, even as traffic continued to flow. Greenpeace activists colored the square to protest against the Paris climate agreement, whose progress, ten years on, is judged highly inadequate… A hard-hitting operation designed to get as many people as possible to react.
Place de l’Étoile dyed orange…
It’s not for Fashion Week, nor even because of the weather, but a strong act by environmental activists to protest against the Paris climate agreement, whose actions have been judged ineffective ten years on, to the day.
Accompanied by Action justice climat and Action non-violente COP21 , Greenpeace activists sprayed the Place de l’Étoile with a natural orange pigment. It’s a color that doesn’t go unnoticed, and is intended to alert the government and citizens to “10 years of climate sabotage”, as the banners read. A pigment which, we reassure you, was non-toxic and easily washed off with water.
As a reminder, the Paris Agreement resulting from COP21 on December 12, 2015 aimed to keep the rise in global average temperature “well below 2°C” compared with the pre-industrial era. Efforts were to be continued to contain this rise to 1.5°C. According to the French Ministry of Ecological Transition, the average temperature in 2024 was 2.1°C higher…