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Photos Of Students’ Climate Strike Prove They're A Force To Be Reckoned With
On Friday, students in over 125 countries walked out of class to protest government inaction on global warming, CNN reports. It's the second time in three months that students around the world have marched out of class to demand stronger measures to fight global warming, and photos of the students' climate strike show that their movement is gaining some serious momentum.
"Since March we have witnessed an entire narrative shift around climate breakdown," organizer Jake Woodier of the UK Student Climate Network (UKSCN) told CNN. "The climate crisis has been driven right to the top of the agenda and politicians and the media are starting to at least have conversations about the need for action."
Many credit the recent wave in climate change activism among young people to the efforts of 16-year-old Greta Thunberg. In 2018, the Swedish student began protesting in front of her country's parliament every Friday to demand stronger policies to fight climate change, and students around the world began joining her, using the #FridaysforFuture hashtag to amplify their efforts on social media. Thunberg spoke to the United Nations in December, and was nominated for a Nobel Peace Price in March.
The March protest drew an estimated 1.6 million people, according to CNN, and the movement is still going strong two months later. Here's what Friday's global climate strike looked like.
Bristol
In some cities, protesters advocated for local climate-related causes. Demonstrators in Bristol, for instance, unfurled a huge banner demanding that a proposed airport expansion, which opponents say would have a disastrous environmental impact, not be built.
Irkutsk
According to Fridays for Future, the umbrella group that organized the protests, almost 2,500 individual climate strikes were planned across the world for Friday.
Zurich
Over 10,000 people turned out for the climate strike in Zurich, the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation reported.
Melbourne
Days after conservatives won a surprise victory in Australia's national elections, over 1,000 protesters in Melbourne staged a "die-in" to illustrate the dire importance of fighting climate change, the Australian news outlet ABC News reports.
Seoul
Seoul has been the host of many climate change protests in recent months, and Friday was no different.
New York City
As of this writing, several protests in the U.S. are still ongoing, as the school day still hasn't ended in some time zones. In New York City, a group of protesters set up shop outside the New York Times headquarters.
By all measures, Friday's climate strike was a success — and it certainly won't be the last. On Thursday, Thunberg called for adults worldwide to participate in a general strike for climate change on Sept. 20.
"To change everything, we need everyone," Thunberg wrote in an op-ed in the Guardian. "It is time for all of us to unleash mass resistance – we have shown that collective action does work. We need to escalate the pressure to make sure that change happens, and we must escalate together."
