Protests and strikes inspired by the 16-year-old Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg are planned in about 150 countries on Friday 20 September, just three days before the UN climate action summit to pressure governments to act to tackle the climate crisis. The strike will culminate in New York when Thunberg, who has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for her climate activism, will spearhead a rally at the United Nations headquarters, where the summit will take place.
Just before dawn broke in the Southern Hemisphere, Greta Thunberg tweeted: “Soon the sun will rise on Friday the 20th of September 2019. Good luck Australia, the Philippines, Japan and all the Pacific Islands. You go first!”
Millions of school climate strikers have been leaving their classrooms every Friday for more than a year as part of a movement sparked by the teenage activist Greta Thunberg who began demonstrating outside the Swedish parliament in August 2018. Now they urge everyone else to join them in action, aiming to make 20 September their biggest mobilisation yet.
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.”
In London, where big crowds are expected to gather near Westminster from 11am, the London mayor, Sadiq Khan, has thrown his weight behind today’s strikes.
This morning, he told the Guardian: “I fully support the thousands of young people peacefully and lawfully protesting around the country today who feel so strongly about the climate change emergency and I share their frustration. The stark reality is we are running out of time for meaningful change. The climate crisis is one of the very biggest challenges we face – I have declared a climate emergency in London – and governments around the world are failing to take the action we need.”
At 1pm, the student strikers are planning to let off alarm clocks across the UK, and are encouraging businesses to set off their fire alarms at the same time in support.
Jake Woodier, the campaign co-ordinator at UK Student Climate Network, said: “Raise the Alarm will help draw attention to the climate emergency in workplaces across the breadth of the UK.”
With hundreds of thousands of children joining the global youth strike in cities around the globe, Extinction Rebellion UK said it stands in solidarity with all those striking.
Caspar Hughes, 48, a Extinction Rebellion activist and father of school striker Max, 12, said: “Parents have left their children to clear up the climate and ecological crisis they have created. The youth should be out partying rather than protesting.”
The first of the worldwide protests took place in Australia, where an estimated 300,000 people gathered at more than 100 rallies calling for action to guard against climate change but protests and strikes are taking place all over the world.
In Germany, 400 protests have been announced across the country and in Nigeria, strikes are planned for at least seven cities. On the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific, young people are rallying and in Taiwan, dozens of representatives from primary schools, high schools, and universities gathered in the capital, Taipei, to launch a petition called “Fridays for the future”.
Global warming caused by heat-trapping greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels has already led to droughts and heatwaves, melting glaciers, rising sea levels and floods, scientists say. Carbon emissions climbed to a record high last year, despite a warning from the UN-backed Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in October that output of the gases must be slashed over the next 12 years to stabilise the climate.
The planet’s average temperature started a steady climb two centuries ago, but has rocketed since the second world war as consumption and population has risen. Global heating means there is more energy in the atmosphere, making extreme weather events more frequent and more intense.
Professor Nigel Arnell, professor of climate system science at the University of Reading, told the Guardian: “It’s clear that increased effort is needed if we are to avoid significant climate change impacts. […] We recently published a study showing the number of people exposed to major heatwaves would increase from 330 million per year now to up to 8 billion per year in 2050 – just 30 years away – the number people exposed to drought would increase from 400 million per year to up to 1 billion per year, and the number of people affected by flooding from major rivers would increase from 15 million per year now to up to 100 million per year.”