Hundreds of thousands join youth climate rallies

Hundreds of thousands of youths demonstrated across European cities yesterday in the second in a global series of protests to avert a climate catastrophe.Waving signs and yelling slogans, schoolchildren and students in Italian cities were among those joining the latest “Friday for Future” rallies.Organisers said 200,000 people joined a march in Milan while another major rally snaked through the centre of Rome.Demos were called in some 180 Italian cities.“Be part of the solution, not the pollution,” they yelled.Tens of thousands of people also marched in Vienna and other cities, making it Austria’s biggest climate rally day so far.The Vienna Boy’s Choir, one of Austria’s most traditional cultural institutions, joined tens of thousands of climate protesters in the Austrian capital city.The 521-year-old choir took to the stage on Vienna’s central Heldenplatz square, which was filled with around 60,000 mostly young demonstrators.In Budapest, thousands of mostly schoolchildren took to the streets, exceeding past participation, with rallies held in several other Hungarian cities.They answered the call of Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg, the figurehead of the movement against climate change.She led the first of the major demos last week, when vast crowds filled the streets in cities worldwide.Scientists warn that time is running out for world leaders to curb global warming, blamed for an increase in environmental disasters.Schools in Italy and some schools in Austria let pupils out to join in the rallies – a trend already reported in several other countries during last week’s rallies.Yesterday’s main event was in Montreal, Canada, with Thunberg in attendance (see report on Page 5).“I have goose bumps today. It is really emotional. Greta has called us and we are there,” a 17-year-old demonstrator in Rome who identified himself as Simone told AFP. “We want to live on this planet the way it is.”And thousands gathered in Thunberg’s home country of Sweden.An estimated 60,000 people gathered in Stockholm yesterday, according to organisers.The Swedish capital was the site of Thunberg’s first protest in front of the parliament building in August 2018.Thousands also gathered in the Swedish cities of Uppsala, Malmo and Umea, and there were protests in other Scandinavian countries too.More than 20 locations in Finland faced protests, including at least 5,000 people demonstrating in front of the parliament in Helsinki.Thousands of Dutch children also skipped school to join a global climate strike, blocking traffic and asking their leaders “how dare you?” in a reference to Thunberg’s speech at the United Nations early this week.Turnout at the march in The Hague exceeded expectations with organizers, estimating the crowd at about 35,000.Police were forced to reroute the march to a location with more space.“This strike is going to have a lot of effect when people keep showing up, not just today but also in the future and we see different kinds of people from all walks of life,” said protester Reinder Rustema.Banging drums and holding pictures of Thunberg, protesters walked through the city centre with placards reading: “For the Greta good”, “Don’t be a fossil fool”, and “You will die of old age, we will die of climate change”.“I understand their concerns, I believe they are being heard,” Dutch premier Mark Rutte said at a press briefing within earshot of the protests. “We have presented ambitious plans to deal with these problems. But we have to do it in a smart way, which also creates jobs.”Thunberg’s brief address electrified the start of the summit aimed at mobilising government and business to break international paralysis over carbon emissions, which hit record highs last year despite decades of warnings from scientists.“This is all wrong. I shouldn’t be up here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean, yet you all come to us young people for hope. How dare you?” she said, her voice quavering with emotion.The Netherlands, with 17mn inhabitants, generated less than 7% of all energy from sustainable sources in 2017, compared to 15% in Germany, and over half of all energy in Sweden.The government has pledged to halve CO2 emissions from 1990 levels by 2030, but by 2017 had only achieved a 13% cut.In Germany thousands took to the streets to demand more environmental protection, although the turnout was lower than for similar protests a week earlier.An international youth movement had announced demonstrations in at least 65 German cities this week.In Hamburg, 3,200 people demonstrated despite rainy weather, according to police.In Munich, police estimated that around 2,000 people took part in a protest march through the city centre, while 1,200 protesters were reported to have taken part in Nuremberg.