Youth rally across world seeking action on climate
STOCKHOLM:TENS of thousands of young people skipped school across the globe on Friday to march through the streets for an international day of student protests aimed at pushing world leaders into action on climate change.
Classrooms in capitals from Bangkok to Berlin, Lagos to London emptied as as ambitious organisers of the student strike hoped to stage 1,000 demos in more than 100 countries.
As youngsters hit the streets in cities across the globe, nations meeting at the UN environment assembly in the Kenyan capital Nairobi announced that they had agreed to “significantly reduce” single-use plastics over the next decade.
But experts said the pledge -which only referred to manmade global warming and made no mention of the fossil fuels driving it -- fell far short of the steps needed to tackling Earth’s burgeoning pollution crisis.
As the marathon talks drew to a close, students flooded into the streets across Europe and Asia carrying placards reading: “There is no planet B”, “You’re destroying our future” and “If you don’t act like adults, we will.”
Despite three decades of warnings, carbon dioxide emissions hit record levels in 2017 and again last year.
Loading the atmosphere with greenhouse gases at current rates will eventually lead to an uninhabitable planet, scientists say.