Protesting On Oil Policy, Greenpeace Activist Closes British PM Rishi Sunak's Private House In Black Cloth

Greenpeace held a demonstration at the residence of British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. (Twitter/@GreenpeaceUK)

JAKARTA - A number of Greenpeace environmental activists staged a demonstration at the residence of British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on Thursday, covering the house with black cloth, protesting the British Government's policy on oil drilling.

An image posted by Greenpeace UK on Twitter showed four protesters on a property in northern England, covering them with black cloth, while two others held a banner that read "RISHI SUNAK - OIL PROFIT OR OUR FUTURE?".

Greenpeace said four activists climbed onto the roof of PM Sunak's house in Yorkshire, northern England, to protest his support for the expansion of oil and gas licenses in the North Sea.

"We urgently need our prime minister to be a climate leader, not a climate burner," Greenpeace UK said in a statement, citing Reuters, August 3.

New oil would be catastrophic for the climate and won't lower energy bills or increase our energy security.

So we're on @RishiSunak's roof to ask him a simple question:

Who's side are you on - Big Oil profits or our future on a habitable planet?#StopRosebank #NoNewOil pic.twitter.com/vmBIHcurbh

— Greenpeace UK (@GreenpeaceUK) August 3, 2023

Meanwhile, a source in PM Sunak's office said police were present there.

"We make no apologies for taking the right approach to ensuring our energy security, using the resources we have here at home, so that we never depend on an aggressor like (Vladimir) Putin for our energy," the source said. .

Earlier, PM Sunak said on Wednesday that he would leave the UK in the evening.

The UK adopted a target of achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2050 under former Prime Minister Theresa May in 2019, and is rapidly building up its renewable energy capacity.

However, activists have criticized the government's record in recent years. On Monday, the government committed to granting hundreds of licenses for the extraction of North Sea oil and gas, as part of efforts to become more energy independent.

The government also approved its first deep coal mine in decades in December.

PM Sunak defended the record on Wednesday, saying Britain had done a better job than any other major country in reducing carbon emissions.