[ad_1]
Young people around the world are back on the streets and online to urge governments to address climate change. Mandatory social distancing due to the coronavirus pandemic makes mass protests difficult.
By Stefan J. Bos
Greta Thunberg and a small group of fellow climate activists showed up in front of the Swedish parliament building despite the current covid-19 pandemic. It is a long way from the crowds that once greeted it when authorities limit seizures from protests.
Wearing face masks, Thunberg and other protesters hold up posters about what they see as dangerous climate change during a “Friday for Future” protest in Stockholm, the Swedish capital.
And Thunberg, 17, urged young people around the world to take part in similar actions from Friday to Saturday online or on the streets. “We need to treat the climate crisis as a crisis. It is as simple as that,” he argued.
“The climate crisis has never been treated as a crisis. And unless we treat it as a crisis, we will not be able to supposedly solve it.” Thunberg stressed.
Arctic protest
18-year-old activist Mya-Rose Craig vies for attention. She was standing on an Arctic ice floe with the message “Youth Strike for Climate.”
Craig believes that melting ice, wildfires, and other natural disasters show that adults have not taken the urgent action needed.
to address global warming caused by massive greenhouse gas emissions.
That is why the teenager, backed by the environmental group Greenpeace, headed to the Arctic Ocean to protest. “So this is the northernmost kind of attack in history. I think this really helps drive this issue. It gives us something to understand that this is urgent. And something to deal with now, or [even better] ten years ago, “he said.
Youth rallies are also returning to larger cities ranging from London and Stockholm in Europe to Sydney in Australia.
The latest protests come just days after the United Nations said concentrations of greenhouse gases in Earth’s atmosphere.
hit a record this year.
Not everyone agrees. But a UN report claimed that a global economic slowdown amid the coronavirus pandemic had little lasting effect.
