The Swedish youth climate movement, Greta Thunberg, called the Glasgow climate conference a “failure” in front of the thousands of young people who came to demonstrate in this Scottish city to demand action against looming climate change. their generation and beyond.
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“It’s no secret that COP26 failed,” she told several thousand children, teens and young adults, calling the conference a “celebration of ‘business as usual’ and ‘blah’.”
France Press agency
“Our leaders don’t show the way, that’s what leadership looks like,” she continued, referring to the crowd.
“Our kings are naked (…) will be judged severely by history,” she said of the leaders assembled at the COP, again accusing them of inaction, and again invoking the “Festival of Green Washing.”
The second day of protests are scheduled for Saturday in Glasgow, at the end of the first week of two weeks of COP26, in order to shout for a climate emergency in the face of the devastating effects across the planet from rising temperatures caused by greenhouse gas emissions. resulting from human activities.
“I hope today makes a difference,” said Zara, 9, who lives in Glasgow. I hope we can plant more trees, get more animals. I think everyone can make a difference.”
There were many young Scots, Friday, who missed school and sang in clear voice on the streets of Glasgow with young people from all over the world.
Leaning out of their windows or lining its old downtown streets lined with sandstone or ocher buildings, residents watched the march dotted with a sign reading “No Planet B” and chanting “If not now, when are you?” “.
Among the crowds led by the global Friday for Futures movement, Ugandan activist Vanessa Nakate was among the speakers.
France Press agency
Beth Donaldson, a 16-year-old Scottish woman came with her friends to say that not far from there, locked in the gigantic convention center, it was adults, in delegations from about 200 countries, who decided the future of his contemporaries.
“We see all these political leaders on TV saying they’re going to act, but we never know what kind of action they’re going to take. It’s not really their future that is in question, it’s our future,” she said.
Julia Klein, a 50-year-old artist, came to pose with her 10-year-old son.
“It’s the young people who are really going to be affected by all of this. They are already aware of it. I want them to have a clean planet. It’s not that they have to fight for food or die in fires or floods,” she told AFP.
Inspired by Greta Thunberg, millions of young people took to the streets around the world in 2019 to call on their leaders to act faster and tougher against global warming.
France Press agency
After the COVID-19 pandemic halted, these weekly Friday demonstrations have resumed for a few weeks, and are still led by the Scandinavian inspirers whose formulas of shock are on the signs.
In October, Italian Environment Minister Roberto Cingolani and COP26 President Alok Sharma promised to send to Glasgow the manifesto adopted by 400 young people from around the world gathered in Milan under the auspices of the United Nations: about fifty pages of proposals for energy transfer, finance or citizen. to share.
The 2015 Paris Agreement aims to limit global warming to below +2°C, if possible +1.5°C, to avoid the worst effects of climate change, which is already causing havoc across the country. Every extra tenth of a degree has its share of consequences.
But according to the latest UN estimates, the world is heading for a “catastrophic” warming of +2.7 degrees Celsius.
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