Young People Around the World Join Global Climate Strike

On Friday, millions of young people around world rallied to demand urgent actions to prevent the catastrophic effects of climate change.

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The protest is taking place in view of the United Nations (UN) Climate Change Conference (COP26), which aims to promote an ambitious action plan to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The Fridays for Future (FFF) movement announced that demonstrations are taking place in over 1,500 locations around the world. In Germany alone, organizers expected hundreds of thousands of people to attend over 400 demonstrations.

"It's been a very strange year and a half with the pandemic. However, the climate crisis has not disappeared... It is quite the opposite. It is now even more urgent than before," said activist Greta Thunberg, who is striking in Berlin.

In August, a UN climate science report warned that human activity has been causing climate disruption for decades; nevertheless, a rapid, large-scale action to reduce emissions could still avoid some of its most destructive impacts.

Governments are not on the right track in the fight against climate change. Even assuming that all countries manage to meet their commitments to reduce CO2 emissions, global emissions will be 16 percent higher in 2030 than in 2010. This would imply that a 1.5 degree Celsius increase in global temperature it will be practically unavoidable.

"The world has never been more threatened or more divided. We are on the edge of an abyss and moving in the wrong direction. I'm here to raise the alarm, the world needs to wake up," UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said at the 76th United Nationsa General Assembly.