VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – Thousands of students are rallying around the world on Friday, demanding action on climate change, with crowds of young people also protesting outside the Vancouver Art Gallery over the noon hour.
Samantha Lin with Sustainabiliteens Vancouver hoped hundreds will take part, locally.
“We’ll all kind of lie on the floor to symbolize being dead from the danger of climate change specifically. The point is to draw attention from passersby and also highlight the dangers of climate change,” Lin said.
“It’s also about climate justice it’s about standing up for people in developing countries who will feel the impacts more. It’s about standing up for people in Indigenous communities who don’t have regular access to clean water.”
The die-in will be followed by a week’s worth of actions, culminating with what organizers hope will be a huge protest next Friday. High school and university students across Canada are inviting parents, unions, businesses, and the general public to join in on a strike for climate action. They hope it will be one of the largest protests in Canadian history.
Worldwide, climate strikes have been taking places in up to 150 countries on Friday.
Thousands have gathered at rallies in Sydney, Hong Kong, Manilla and even Kabul, Afghanistan where people are dying every day in horrific bomb attacks, but a young generation is worried that if war doesn’t kill them, climate change will.
About 100 young people, with several young women in the front carrying a banner emblazoned with “Fridays for future”, marched through central Kabul, following behind an armoured personnel carrier with armed soldiers along the route for protection.
Fardeen Barakzai, one of the organizers and head of the local save-the-climate group called Oxygen said, “we want to do our part. We as the youth of our country know the problem of climate change. We know war can kill a group of people … the problem in Afghanistan is our leaders are fighting for power but the real power is in nature.”
Young people have also marched in the streets of London, Berlin, Prague and other European centres. In Africa, hundreds of people gathered in some cities to highlight the dangers of climate change. Banners in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, ranged from angry to playful, with one reading: “This planet is getting hotter than my imaginary boyfriend.”
Other climate protests have taken place in Johannesburg and the South African capital, Pretoria. Experts say Africa is the most vulnerable continent to climate change and the least equipped to deal with it. Governments have pleaded for more support from the international community.
More than 30 heads of state and government have signed an appeal for greater action to fight climate change circulated by Austrian president Alexander Van der Bellen ahead of next week’s conference on global warming at the United Nations in New York.
The Initiative for more Climate Ambition declares climate change the “key challenge of our time,” adding that “our generation is the first to experience the rapid increase in temperatures around the globe and probably the last with the opportunity to effectively combat an impending global climate crisis.”
It says countries need to act “jointly, decisively and swiftly.”
German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier’s office said Friday he was among the signatories, others of whom included French President Emmanuel Macron, Israeli President Reuven Rivlin and Netherlands Prime Minister Mark Rutte.
-With files from Renee Bernard
