A mural depicting teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg has been vandalised in the Canadian city of Edmonton, Alberta.
Painted by local artist AJA Louden last Friday, the mural showed Thunberg giving her powerful 'how dare you' UN address. However, the large artwork lasted only a few days before being defaced.
According to The Independent, a journalist for CBC witnessed a man approach the mural and spray-paint the phrases: “Stop the lies! This is oil country!”
“This is Alberta. This is oil country," the man later told the journalist. "My father has worked in the oil industry. We don’t need foreigners coming in and telling us how to run our business, support our families, put food on our tables…
"Just shut up until you have solutions.”
CBC reports that the man added: "It is absolutely intolerant of them [climate activists] to tell us how to change our lives and our people. She should go back to her country and try to make her country better."
Later in the day, a second man added a slur in French to the mural.
Earlier last Friday, 16-year-old Thunberg had delivered a speech at a local climate rally.
According to Reuters, she told the crowd that richer “countries such as Canada and Sweden need to get down to zero emissions much faster so people in poorer countries can heighten their standard of living by building the infrastructure we have already built.”
Meanwhile, the mural's artist said the vandalism was 'not a big deal'.
In an email to CBC, Louden wrote: "Nothing lasts forever - one of my favourite things about that wall is that anyone is allowed to express themselves there, so I'm not upset at all."
They continued: "I haven't seen what went over it, but if anyone is upset about what was painted over the portrait, they can just paint back over it, it's not a big deal at all."
