Climate activist Greta Thunberg found herself detained by police in the Netherlands twice on Saturday as she participated in a group protest aimed at blocking highways.
Thunberg was initially detained after she joined a group of protesters in Hague who were attempting to block a highway. After she was subsequently released, Thunberg later joined another group of activists blocking another road leading to a railway station, resulting in her second detention. According to Reuters, she was transported in a police van following her second arrest.
Thunberg was held for several hours then was ultimately released again in the evening.
In response to the protests, Thunberg emphasized the urgency of addressing climate change, stating, “We are in a planetary emergency and we are not going to stand by and let people lose their lives and livelihood and be forced to become climate refugees when we can do something.”
“While we can’t comment on individual cases, we can confirm that all of the people who were picked up by police and put on to minibuses were officially arrested, because they were blocking the highway and that is against the law,” Hague police stated in response to the incident.
Last January, Thunberg was also detained in Europe after she and a group of protestors “rushed towards the ledge” of a coal mine in Germany.
Thunberg’s latest activism adds to her ongoing efforts to raise awareness about climate change. Nearly five years ago, at the age of 16, she made headlines for her speech to the European Parliament, urging action with the now-famous words, “Act as if the house is on fire.”
“I have said those words before, and a lot of people have explained why that is a bad idea. A great number of politicians have told me that panic never leads to anything good, and I agree. To panic, unless you have to, is a terrible idea. But when your house is on fire and you want to keep your house from burning to the ground, then that does require some level of panic,” she said at the time.
Thunberg also warned the European Parliament about the potential consequences of inaction, predicting that by 2030, the world could “set off an irreversible chain reaction that will most likely lead to the end of our civilization as we know it.”
