Climate activists thrown out of Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm speaking event
Julia Johnson
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Climate protesters descended on a Detroit Free Press event in Michigan where Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm was set to deliver remarks on Monday.
Video on social media emerged of protesters apparently being physically thrown out of the Townsend Hotel in Birmingham during the publication’s “Breakfast Club” forum.
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The group of demonstrators chanted as several others were escorted out. They could be heard yelling, “No MVP. No LNG. Granholm, you are killing me,” repetitively.
The activists were presumably referring to the Mountain Valley Pipeline and the Alaska LNG project.
https://twitter.com/BGOnTheScene/status/1670781595500904449?s=20
According to the Detroit Free Press, members of the climate organization booked rooms in the hotel to stay overnight and made fake name tags for the event.
After being kicked out, the protesters, who appeared to be a part of the climate protest organization Climate Defiance, held a banner that read “End Fossil Fuels.”
Climate Defiance has taken credit for various high-profile demonstrations, including the interruption of a recent keynote address from Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) during a Semafor event and a road blockade ahead of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
Other videos from the demonstration showed protesters being dragged out of the hotel on the ground while chanting, “Don’t let our futures burn.”
Members of the group then spoke with reporters to discuss the motivation for crashing the event. “[Granholm] does not care about the American people or Michiganders,” one protester said, noting that she was once governor of the state as well as attorney general. “She is a friend of the corporations and the oil companies.”
“F*** you, Jennifer. F*** you, Joe Biden. F*** all these politicians,” another demonstrator yelled.
The Department of Energy did not respond to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment.
Despite the protest, Granholm spoke as planned with emcee Carol Cain, an award-winning columnist and senior producer and host of CBS Detroit’s Michigan Matters.
The secretary referenced the protesters during her remarks, saying, “I would be out there marching with them in terms of ‘We’ve got to do this. We’ve got to do this.’”
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“On the other hand, you cannot just flip a switch because we have whole economies that have been built up around using fossil fuels. And so the question is, what does that transition look like?” she asked.
President Joe Biden is set to deliver remarks addressing the “climate crisis” at 4:15 p.m. in Palo Alto, California. According to the White House, he will tout his administration’s “historic” action when it comes to climate.