Thousands of people across the world are taking part in strikes to call for urgent measures to tackle climate change. Millions of people in 139 countries are expected to take part in the protests. In Australia 300,000 people have already started.
Thousands have gathered at The Domain in central Sydney/ Pic credits: @Annabelle Johnson
Students are leading the events from Australia to Iceland to highlight the need to address the climate emergency. Strikers have different goals of what they want the governments to do in order to achieve ‘climate justice’. Most want governments to abandon fossil fuels and switch to 100% renewable energy by next year.
In the UK, there will be more than 200 events and demonstrations. These include:
- Aberdeen at 11am
- Birmingham at 11am
- Belfast at midday
- Cardiff at 10am
- Edinburgh at 11am
- Newcastle at 11am
- Glasgow 11am
- London at 11am
School Strike 4 Climate has estimated that around 100,000 people are protesting in Melbourne and a mass of people are striking in Sydney. In Thailand, protesters have already stamped the environment ministry in Bangkok and hosted a ‘die-in’.
Tweeting a photo from a climate strike, the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, said:
Young people here and across the world are making it impossible to ignore the environment and climate emergency.
This is the wonderful youth #ClimateStrike in my constituency – now I’m on my way to the main London demonstration. pic.twitter.com/GI1AniUnpb
— Jeremy Corbyn (@jeremycorbyn) September 20, 2019
Climate Action Tracker which measures the government climate action said global warming are likely to exceed 1.5C by 2035 if no action is taken. Under the Paris climate agreement in 2015, countries pledged to keep temperature rises to “well below” 2C above pre-industrial levels and to keep them to 1.5C to avoid the most dangerous effects. Climate Action Trackers said the current policies would see 2C breached by 2053 and temperatures rise by 3.2C by 2100.
Bill Hare, chief executive of Climate Analytics – one of the partners of the Climate Action Network, said: “We’re heading to at least twice the warming limit governments agreed four years ago.
“It’s time for them to strengthen their Paris Agreement targets, as promised, and rapidly scale up action at home. We are inching forward, at best.”
