Rallies for climate held worldwide
BERLIN – Environmental actvisits staged protests on several continents Friday to press their demands for more government action to curb global warming ahead of the U.N. climate summit in Glasgow.
Protesters rallied in Uganda, Bangladesh, India, Italy, Sweden and Germany to call for measures preventing dangerous global warming levels and taking into account the plight of the world’s poorest, who are particularly hard-hit by climate change.
Thousands of mostly young people rallied at Berlin’s iconic Brandenburg Gate. Many called on the next German government to place greater emphasis on tackling climate change, with some protesters attempting to blockade the offices of the three parties negotiating to form a coalition government.
Those parties include the centerleft Social Democrats who finished first in the Sept. 26 election ahead of outgoing Chancellor Angela Merkel’s center-right Union bloc. The Union bloc is not part of those talks, though Merkel is expected to attend the U.N. climate talks next month.
In Stockholm, Swedish activist Greta Thunberg took part in a protest. Her weekly “school strike for climate” helped inspire the international protest movement that saw regular, vast demonstrations before restrictions because of the pandemic curtailed such rallies. Thunberg said activists want to put pressure on leaders meeting in Glasgow to agree on tougher actions for tackling climate change.
“We are not going to let them get away with just talking and not doing anything and pretending the situation is under control,” she said.