By Janice Williams
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Students and adults all around the world came out in droves for the Global Climate Strike launched by Swedish teenager and climate activist Greta Thunberg. More than 4,000 events in 150 countries were scheduled, according to Thunberg.
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From the looks of social media, thousands of people in major cities like Berlin, Moscow, Hong Kong, London, Los Angeles and New York City marched in solidarity to call attention to global warming in hopes of waking up world leaders who failed to recognize climate change as a detrimental issue. Photos and videos depicted people flooding city streets with signs.
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Many crowded streets in places like Dublin, Ireland and Melbourne, Australia with their signs warning of Climate Change and urging others to act to reverse it. In Berlin, more than 100,000 people were estimated to be in attendance at strike events while in New York City, the Department of Education allowed 1.1. million students to skip school to participate in the strikes—with parent permission, of course.
The purpose of the youth-led strikes are to demand "climate justice" and observe the ongoing issue of climate change as not just an environmental issue but rather an ethical obligation. They're also demanding that governments all across the globe determine a safe pathway to keep temperatures below 1.5 degrees of warming.
"We, children and students, don't feel like we have a choice: it's been years of talking, countless negotiations, empty deals on climate change, fossil fuel companies being given free rides to drill beneath our soils and burn away our futures for their profit. Politicians have known about climate change for decades. They have willingly handed over their responsibility for our future to profiteers whose search for quick cash threatens our very existence," the strike's mission statement reads. "We have learned that if we don't start acting for our future, nobody else will make the first move. We are the ones we've been waiting for."
Sixteen-year-old Thunberg met with Congress just days before strikes took place worldwide and submitted the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's special report on global warming, which cited a temperature increase of 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, CNN reported. The activist, who traveled across the Atlantic in a zero-emissions sailboat instead of flying, urged leaders to read the document and learn for themselves of the severe impacts the temperature increase was already having on the Earth.
"I am submitting this report as my testimony because I don't want you to listen to me, I want you to listen to the scientists," she said. "And I want you to unite behind the science. And then I want you to take real action," she said.
Thunberg first made headlines in Sweden over a year ago after staging sit-ins outside of the Swedish Parliament. Her efforts went viral, inspiring people in a number of countries to join in her crusade to save the planet and wake up sleeping adults who've cared too little about the adverse effects global warming will have on the leaders of tomorrow.
Her efforts have landed her cause support from the likes of former President Barack Obama and various other world leaders.
See below for more photos and videos of participants in Friday's strikes.
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