From Sydney to London, thousands of school students walked out of classes on Friday in a global student strike to protest against government inaction on climate change. “Climate change is worse than Voldemort,” read a sign carried by one student in Wellington, New Zealand, referring to the evil wizard in the hugely popular Harry Potter books and films. “The oceans are rising, so are we,” read another in Sydney.
Student protests in Wellington; Melbourne, Australia; and Sydney drew tens of thousands of people. In Europe, students packed streets and squares in cities including Copenhagen, Denmark; Rome; Vienna; and Lisbon, Portugal. Demonstrations were also planned in the United States.
The worldwide student strike movement started in August 2018, when 16-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg began protesting outside her parliament on school days. She has since been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
“If we don’t do something, it’ll be our lives affected,” said Sydney student Callum Frith, who was wearing his school uniform. “We need action.” In London, thousands of students marched from Parliament Square to Trafalgar Square holding banners reading “The future is in our hands” and “We’re missing lessons to teach you one.”
The children and young people stopped at various points around the city, reading out calls for change. “The clock is ticking and time is against us,” they shouted. “We are the last generation that can fix this. We’ll have more hurricanes, we’ll have rising sea levels,” said one boy. “Future generations won’t be able to build a time machine and come back here to remind politicians. As youths who will inherit the land, we gather here to demand that the government work with us to solve these problems.”
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