Hundreds of thousands of young people skipped school across the globe on Friday to march through the streets for an international day of student protests aimed at pushing world leaders into action on climate change.
Classrooms in capitals from Bangkok to Berlin and Lagos to London emptied as organizers of the student strike called demonstrations in more than 100 countries.
Students flooded into the streets across Europe, North and South America, and Asia carrying placards reading: “There is no planet B”, “You’re destroying our future” and “If you don’t act like adults, we will.”
Despite three decades of warnings, carbon dioxide emissions hit record levels in 2017 and again last year.
Loading the atmosphere with greenhouse gases at current rates will eventually lead to an uninhabitable planet, scientists say.
In Stockholm, Swedish teen activist Greta Thunberg — who inspired the protests — warned that time was running out.
“We are living through an existential crisis that has been ignored for decades and if we do not act now it may be too late,” the 16-year-old, a Nobel Peace Prize nominee, told Swedish public television station SVT.
