Rallies against Trump’s policies on climate, environment withstand inclement weather

SEATTLE — Thousands of people across the U.S. marched in rain, snow and sweltering heat Saturday to demand action on climate change — mass protests that coincided with President Donald Trump’s 100th day in office and took aim at his agenda for rolling back environmental protections.

At the marquee event, the Peoples Climate March in Washington, D.C., tens of thousands of demonstrators made their way down Pennsylvania Avenue on their way to encircle the White House as temperatures soared into the 90s.

Organizers said about 300 sister marches or rallies were being held around the country, including in Seattle, Boston and San Francisco. A wet spring snow fell in Denver, where several hundred activists posed in the shape of a giant thermometer for a photograph and a dozen people rode stationary bikes to power the loudspeakers. In Chicago, a rain-soaked crowd of thousands headed from the city’s federal plaza to Trump Tower.

“We are here because there is no Planet B,” the Rev. Mariama White Hammond of Bethel AME Church told a rally in Boston.

The demonstrations came one week after supporters of science gathered in 600 cities around the globe, alarmed by political and public rejection of established research on topics including climate change and vaccines.

Participants Saturday said they object to Trump’s rollback of restrictions on mining, oil drilling and greenhouse gas emissions at coal-fired power plants, among other things. Trump has called climate change a hoax, disputing the overwhelming consensus of scientists that the world is warming and that man-made carbon emissions are primarily to blame.

A demonstration stretched for several blocks in downtown Tampa, Fla., where marchers said they were concerned about the threat rising seas pose to the city.

In Austin, the Texas Department of Public Safety said about 3,500 people marched from the Capitol to the University of Texas. Many held signs with slogans like “Climate change is not fake science.”

Astrid Riecken / Getty Images People march from the U.S. Capitol to the White House for the People’s Climate Movement on Saturday to protest President Donald Trump’s environmental policies. Demonstrators across the country are gathering to demand a clean energy economy.