The planet goes on strike
PRESSURE ON DENIERS From Australia to US, hundreds of thousands of protesters hold climate awareness rallies
BERLIN/LONDON: Hundreds of thousands of protesters in Australia, many of them children who skipped school, kicked off a day of demonstrations around the world against climate change in the run-up to a UN summit in New York.
Rallies to open the Global Climate Strike took place on Friday in 110 towns and cities across Australia, including Sydney and the national capital, Canberra. Demonstrators called for their country, the world’s largest exporter of coal and liquid natural gas, to take more drastic action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
“Even though we ourselves aren’t sick, the planet which we live on is, and we are protesting and fighting for it,” said Siobhan Sutton, a 15-year-old student at Perth Modern School.
Organisers said more than 300,000 protesters took to Australian streets in what would be the country’s biggest demonstration since the Iraq War in 2003.
Smaller protests took place in Asia, from the Philippines to Hong Kong and India.
Rallies were also held in Europe, Africa and the US, where organisers say more than 800 events were expected.
In Germany, which has seen large-scale climate rallies for over a year, police said 17,000 people had gathered in the southwestern city of Freiburg, one of 500 cities across the country where protests were planned.
Rallies were also held in Kenya’s capital Nairobi, Johannesburg and the South African capital, Pretoria.
The protests are partl y inspired by the activism of Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg, who has staged weekly demonstrations under the heading Fridays for Future. ‘BREXIT THREATENS EU CLIMATE ACTION’ Weakened relations between the UK and the EU due to Brexit could weaken their ambitions to tackle the climate crisis, scientists have warned. Brexit could give climate denying governments in Europe more prominence and power to block environmental regulations, researchers from the University of Sheffield warned.
The UK has set a positive example through domestic policy innovation such as the 2050 target for net-zero carbon emissions and the Climate Change Act, which played a central role in driving ambition at the EU level.