Global climate strike: Greta Thunberg and school students lead climate crisis protest – live updates | Environment











Numbers at Berlin‘s Klimastreik have reached 100,000, it has just been announced

Carola Rackete, the SeaWatch Captain who was arrested in Italy several weeks ago addressed Berlin’s Klimastreik, to huge applause.

She told them:


We adults are responsible for the fact that the earth is dying….we should not be under the illusion that our individual actions can do anything to turn the situation around.

She paid tribute to “the children and young people who have campaigned tirelessly for over a year… and managed to get this issue to the top of the political agenda”.

She said temperatures could be expected to rise by 4-6 degrees by the end of the century. Extinction Rebellion to which she belongs was telling the truth when it predicted the collapse of human civilisation as a result. We can no longer stop global warming, she said, ”it’s too late“ but we can ”reduce greenhouse gases with immediate effect”.




Students take part in the global climate strike of the Fridays for Future movement in Berlin, Germany.

Students take part in the global climate strike of the Fridays for Future movement in Berlin, Germany. Photograph: Christian Mang/Reuters









Sarah from Cardiff asked:


What are the advantages people will see and experience through the changes we need to make due to climate change? For example, I believe cycling rather than driving will make people healthier, shopping locally rather than online increases daily interactions. Do you envisage the activists and media managing to put this side of the crisis across?

Cleaning up greenhouse gases has a myriad of beneficial side effects, including cleaner air as diesel and petrol cars are taken off the roads in favour of electric vehicles, public transport and walking or cycling. Our knowledge of the harms of air pollution has expanded dramatically in the past few years: we now know air pollutants can be found in all human organs, and it is linked not only to respiratory problems and heart disease but also dementia, developmental problems and miscarriage.

In some ways, the cleaning up of air pollution is easier to explain than climate chaos because people can see and feel air pollution more clearly than the link between invisible carbon dioxide and extreme weather, and increasingly air pollution campaigners are making the link with climate benefits from moving away from coal and diesel in particular.

Louis from London asked:


Today is wonderful to see – the energy and passion – but how can you be sure we haven’t left it too late ? There is a climate doomosphere – I’m thinking Paul Beckwith, Peter Wadhams and others who suggest overwhelming events in the next decade or two. Can they be dismissed as fringe cranks?

Climate change is a problem for today, not the distant future, and the effects are already being seen, as we have extensively reported. But there is still time to stave off the worst effects if we take action on emissions now.

The IPCC has said emissions must be effectively zero by around mid-century to hold the world to no more than 1.5C of warning, and every effort to bring down emissions helps towards that goal. But there are scary things we know less about: tipping points, which could cause runaway heating to take hold. These include Arctic sea ice melt, which reveals dark sea instead of reflective ice, creating more warming, and the melting permafrost that releases methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, in a vicious circle.

Some have suggested we turn our efforts to adapting to climate change instead of cutting emissions. But adapting without cutting emissions is like trying to mop up an overflowing sink with the taps still running. The truth is we need to do both, and urgently.

You can share your questions now via our form here, or in the comments below but please @Fiona so that they’ll be easier for us to find.

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Just to stand back from the breathless enthusiasm of the protests for a moment, our environment editor, Damian Carrington, has been pulling out a series of charts that highlight the scale of the challenge – and the beginnings of some solutions.

Perhaps the most important one is this: the planet’s average temperature started a steady climb two centuries ago, but has rocketed since the second world war as consumption and population has risen. Global heating means there is more energy in the atmosphere, making extreme weather events more frequent and more intense.

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We have also tried to capture this alarming rise in temperatures in a startling piece of music. Alas, it is not a banger, so is unlikely to become a global anthem for the Friday strikes movement.



150 years of global warming in a minute-long symphony

But it’s not all gloom and doom. The three charts below show the progress we have made, in renewable energy generation, electric vehicle production, and battery development.

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Your climate crisis questions answered

Today’s climate strikes highlight a crucial fact: that our actions in the next few years will decide the world’s future, and whether we can avoid the worst ravages of global heating or succumb to climate chaos.

We must effectively eliminate greenhouse gas emissions, and nurture the natural world enough to absorb the remainder, by mid-century to avoid a future of catastrophic and irreversible climate chaos. Extreme weather is already driving 2 million people a week to seek humanitarian aid, and that is set to rise to 150 million in the next decade alone.

The Guardian will try to answer your questions on the climate strikes and the forces shaping them. You can share your questions now via our form here, or in the comments below but please @Fiona so that they’ll be easier for us to find.

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The US is set to stage its largest ever day of protest over the climate crisis, with tens of thousands of students set to be joined by adults in abandoning schools and workplaces for a wave of strikes across the country.

Climate strikes will take place in more than 1,000 locations, with major rallies in New York, Washington DC, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco and Miami.

The young strikers’ totemic figure, Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, will take part in the New York walkout and will speak to massed protesters in Manhattan.

Authorities in New York City have announced that its student population of 1.1 million is allowed to skip school in order to attend the strikes.

Dozens of companies, including Patagonia and Ben and Jerry’s, will support striking staff, with major unions also backing the walkouts.

Dulce Belen Ceballos Arias, an 18-year-old from San Francisco, said she will be striking because “I want children of my own and I want them to have a better life than me. I don’t want that to be taken away by climate change.”

Students in Boston will also be excused school, with a crowd of 10,000 expected to assemble. “We are excited to disrupt business as usual, to demand a Green New Deal,” said Audrey Maurine Xin Lin, an 18-year-old organizer in Boston, in reference to the resolution put forward by progressive Democrats to enact a second world war-style mobilization to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions.

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A small but noisy crowd gathered in the financial district of Sandton in Johannesburg, outside the offices of Sasol, a huge South African energy and chemical company.

Natalie Kapsosideris, 16, said:


We don’t really have a way out of this. The future looks really dismal at this point. There’s not going to be a lot of food available, there will be droughts, floods, natural disasters. The fact that Sasol gets away with stealing our future from us … and it’s all because they want to make money.

Tariro Banganayi, 18, a student at Sacred Heart college, said:


It’s important that I lend my voice to this cause … a lot of people who aren’t as privileged as I am don’t have the opportunity to speak out against these sorts of issues, who live where the air is unbreathable, where toxic waste is dumped in rivers, those people don’t have a voice to speak out … Also I am here to educate people about these issues and to get as much information from as many different places as I can … I am going to try to diversify the way that I raise awareness … I am going to use my social media a lot more effectively, I am going to centre my conversations with my friends, I am going to bring it up at the dinner table with my family … because if every person tells one person then we can tell everybody.




Climate protesters demonstrate outside the local government legislature’s offices in Johannesburg, South Africa

Climate protesters demonstrate outside the local government legislature’s offices in Johannesburg, South Africa Photograph: Themba Hadebe/AP

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Crowds of students in Delhi are blocking the road near to Lodhi Gardens, chanting: “What do we want? Climate justice.” “You can’t run away from climate change,” reads one sign.

Delhi is one of 21 cities predicted to run out of groundwater by 2020, according to the Indian government’s policy thinktank, Niti Aayog.

It is also one of the most polluted cities in the world.“The lungs of an 11 year old have black spots on them,” Shivam, a law student, says. “This is why we have to change things now.”




Crowds in Delhi participating in the climate strike

Climate Strike India Photograph: Rebecca Ratcliffe/The Guardian

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