Lisbon – Dozens of protesters angry about the climate crisis stormed a building where Portugal's Economy Minister Antonio Costa e Silva was speaking demanding that the former oil executive resign.

Holding banners and chanting slogans, protesters demanded climate action, shouting: "Out Costa e Silva!"

Police officers dragged the protesters out of the building. Portuguese broadcaster RTP reported the minister left the building through a back door.

The protest in Portugal took place as world leaders, policy makers and delegates from nearly 200 countries gather at the COP27 U.N. climate summit Egypt, where they hope to keep alive a goal to avert the worst impacts of climate change.

But some activists do not believe COP27 will solve the problem. "The situation is serious and urgent," Marta Leandro, the VP of Portuguese environment group Quercus, said at the protest in Lisbon. "What we do or do not do in this decade will have a great impact on climate security."

U.N. experts said in a report on Tuesday that promises by companies, banks and cities to achieve net-zero emissions often amount to little more than greenwashing.

Countries are far from agreeing on technical details for running global trading in carbon offset credits after one week of talks at the COP27 U.N. climate summit in Egypt, according to negotiators and observers, with delays threatening to blow a 2023 deadline.

Carbon offsets allow countries or companies to pay others to cut greenhouse gas emissions to offset their own. While companies are already trading carbon offset credits in private markets, the so-called Article 6 of the Paris Agreement would fix rules enabling countries to partly achieve their national climate targets by buying such credits.

Countries applauded each other at last year's climate summit in Glasgow for agreeing on broad principles governing carbon markets, breaking six years of stalemate. But that deal pushed trickier technical work to subsequent summits including the current COP27 meeting in Sharm El-Sheikh.

While, hundreds of companies and countries are relying on buying offsets to reach pledges to hit "net zero" emissions, a U.N. expert group last week warned that many of those targets rely too heavily on offsets to avoid the harder task of cutting outright emissions.
-Reuters