Frustrations as marchers demand faster climate action
Tens of thousands of climate activists marched Saturday through the Scottish city hosting the U.N. climate summit, physically close to the global negotiators inside but separated by a vast gulf in expectations, with frustrated marchers increasingly dismissive of the talks and demanding immediate action instead to slow global warming.
The mood at the protest in Glasgow was upbeat despite the anger and bursts of rain. Similar protests were also held in London, Amsterdam, Paris, Dublin, Copenhagen, Zurich and Istanbul.
Many of the marchers condemned government leaders for failing to produce the fast action they say is needed, with some echoing activist Greta Thunberg’s view Friday that the talks were just more “blah, blah, blah.”
“We’re having these conversations, but there’s no policies to actually back them,” said Daze Aghaji, a marcher from London at the Glasgow demonstration, shouting over the steady beat of the drums.
“And on top of that, the real people should be in the room,” Aghaji said, referring to complaints that the Glasgow summit has too sharply limited participation by the public. “How are we expecting to make decent policy when the people who are the stakeholders of this aren’t even present in the room?”
Marchers held signs with messages including “Code Red for Humanity,” “Stop big polluters,” “COP26, we are watching you” or simply “I’m angry.” One sign asked “If not you, then who? If not now, then when?”
Megan McClellan, 24, of Glasgow said she doubted that climate negotiators were listening.
“This is a very easy thing for them to ignore. They’re nice and comfortable” inside the summit conference center, she said, which is ringed by steel fences.
But her friend Lucette Wood, 30, of Edinburgh disagreed.
“They might not actually do anything about it but they pretend that they do ... and they will just put it off for 2030 years,” Wood said.
Thunberg’s dismissive talk of the two-week climate summit — which has another week to go — has touched a nerve inside and outside the summit site. Government leaders and negotiators insist they are as equally aware as the marchers of the urgency of their task, with time slipping away to rein in pollution from fossil fuels before the Earth faces much higher levels of warming.
Jamila Khatoon from Pakistan carried a sign in Glasgow about three glaciers in her region that may disappear because of climate change.
“The glaciers are melting,” Khatoon said. “Villages are drowning. Nobody is doing anything.”
Elaine Knox, 69 and William Oliphant, 60, both from Glasgow, said they were attending the rally for the next generations.
“I’m dying before the worst happens,” Knox said. “It’s the youngsters we’re leaving a horrible, horrible world.”
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, whose country is hosting the talks, has defended the progress made by governments in raising promises of emissions cuts and climate financing, while acknowledging the public’s demands that more needs to be done.
At the huge U.N. conference venue, negotiators spent a seventh straight day haggling over draft agreements that can be passed to government ministers for political approval next week. Among the issues under discussion were a fresh commitment to capping global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit), pushing countries to review their efforts more frequently to increase the pressure for deeper cuts, and providing more financial support for poor nations to adapt to climate change.