The heiress to the Disney fortune was arrested on Long Island on Friday while protesting the use of small private jets with other climate activists at a Hamptons airport.
Abigail Disney, the great-niece of Walt Disney, joined activists from the New York Communities for Change, Planet Over Profit and Sunrise Movement NYC at the East Hampton Airport in Wainscott to protest “exclusive vacations of wealthy fossil fuel investors and polluters driving the climate crisis,” Fox News reported.
“As a person who has been privileged enough to use private jets, I know it’s hard to give up a luxury that is special,” Disney said in a statement Friday. “But I also know that the time has passed for spewing greenhouse gasses like this merely for our personal comfort.”
“The events of the past week alone, with Earth’s average temperature hitting an all time high, drought and fatal heat waves across the country, floods in Vermont and New York, and ocean temperatures around Florida well over 90 degrees, should remove all doubt once and for all,” she added. “The wealthiest 1% uses as much greenhouse gas as the entire bottom 50%. It is time for real change and this is the most obvious place to start.”
Disney and her fellow protesters formed a blockade in front of the airport, which only serves private and charter planes, according to Fox News.
The East Hampton Airport is popular among the Hamptons’ affluent elite.
“These same rich people farting into the Hamptons on private jets are often the ones who make their money in industries that hugely accelerate the climate crisis,” said Teddy Ogborn, an organizer of Planet Over Profit who was also arrested at the protest.
“As long as the 1% continues to needlessly poison our air and heat our earth, we will continue to escalate our actions against them.”
The activists have planned a number of additional protests throughout the weekend, including a “Tax the Rich for Climate Justice” march on Saturday, a protest near the private Sebonack Golf Course in Southampton on Sunday and a rally outside the home of a Citibank board member with pitchforks.
