Environmental activists spray-painted a superyacht in Ibiza on Sunday that they said belongs to the heiress of Walmart.
In a video posted on Twitter by the Spanish environmental group Futuro Vegetal, two activists are seen spraying the boat with red and black paint and displaying a banner that reads “You consume others suffer.”
“The richest 1% of the world population pollutes more than the poorest 50%,” the activists said in one of the of the videos posted. “They are condemning us to a future of pain, misery and desolation. They are destroying our planet, compromising the habitability of the land and everything, to lead a standard of living that goes beyond the limits of reason.”
See the video below.
The group said in a tweet that the yacht belongs to Nancy Walton Laurie, billionaire heiress of Walmart. Laurie, one of two daughters of Walmart co-founder Bud Walton, has a net worth of $8.8 billion, according to Forbes.
“We need to change the way they are doing things. It’s a question of life or death,” said a voice in the Futuro Vegetal video. “And already, to this day, it is an issue that is killing many people.”
The organization reported that the two protesters were detained by the Spanish Civil Guard on Sunday morning.
The group also contrasted the superyachts in the port belonging to the wealthy with the migrants that perished attempting to enter Europe.
“The Mediterranean is a cemetery of migrants,” the activists said in the video.
Last month, a fishing boat carrying up to 750 migrants from the Middle East, Asia and Africa capsized off the coast of Greece. Just over 100 were rescued alive.
The activist group engages in civil disobedience to draw attention to the climate crisis. On Friday, three activists from Futuro Vegetal threw paint at private jets in Ibiza, halting activity at the airport for several hours, according to a tweet.
A United Nations report from last spring said without immediate and deep emission reductions across all sectors, limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius is “beyond reach.” Rapid mitigation measures – reductions in fossil fuels and better building practices – are needed to avoid unsustainable global warming, according to the report.
Last year, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (considered to be the most authoritative assessment of the state of global warming) said climate change caused by humans was “an established fact” and warned that some effects of global warming are already inevitable.
With worldwide record-breaking heat, estimates suggest that 2023 could be the warmest on record.
Contributing: Doyle Rice and Dinah Voyles Pulver