Protesters in Australia, Japan and India yesterday launched a fresh round of global demonstrations against climate change, heeding the call to action from 16-year-old climate change campaigner Greta Thunberg.
Hundreds of demonstrators in Sydney — brandishing placards that read: “You’re burning our future” and chanting: “We will rise” — gathered outside the offices of the Liberal Party as Sydney was again enveloped in toxic smoke from hundreds of bushfires that have devastated the country’s southeast in recent weeks.
“My home town was on the frontlines,” said student Sam Galvin, who was protesting in Melbourne. “That kind of shocked me into realizing that this is something that is happening and it’s time I do something about it.”
Photo: AFP
The target of the protesters’ ire was Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who has angrily denied any link between the fires and climate change, while defending his support for fossil fuels.
“Our government’s inaction on the climate crisis has supercharged bushfires,” school strike leader Shiann Broderick said. “People are hurting. Communities like ours are being devastated. Summer hasn’t even begun.”
Australia, with a population of 25 million, has low carbon emissions compared with the planet’s biggest polluters, but is one of the world’s leading coal exporters.
Protests also took place in Tokyo, where hundreds marched through the teeming Shinjuku District to raise awareness of the issue.
“I feel a sense of crisis because almost no one in Japan is interested” in climate change, 19-year-old student Mio Ishida said. “I was really inspired by Greta’s actions. I thought that if I didn’t act now, it would be too late. I wanted to do something I could do.”
In New Delhi, about 50 school and university students staged a march to the Indian Ministry of Environment in the world’s most polluted capital, carrying placards and chanting slogans that urged the government to declare a climate emergency.
“This is about doing something that you believe in,” 23-year-old Saumya Chowdhury said. “We want the government to acknowledge this and have a conversation on this issue with people.”
India is one of the biggest sources of greenhouse gases and has 14 of the 15 most polluted cities in the world, according to a UN study.
Last month, millions of people took to the streets in nearly every major global city for a series of “climate strikes.”
The latest demonstrations come as representatives of 200 nations prepare to gather next week in Madrid for a 12-day UN Climate Change Summit.
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