Young activists want action as protesters rally at climate summit

Thousands of climate activists from across the world have descended this week on Glasgow, demanding that nations gathering for a global climate conference produce real, meaningful change.

And some of the strongest and most urgent calls for action have come from young protesters who say that the world they are inheriting is teetering on the brink of a climate catastrophe.

They have spent the week disrupting talks held by gas giants, and staging theatrical spectacles on the fringes of the international event, known as COP26. But the protests will peak Friday and Saturday in two days of demonstrations expected to draw up to 100,000 people.

On Friday afternoon, crowds streamed into a leafy public park in central Glasgow for one of the centrepieces of the protest plans. Some protesters were carrying banners reading, “We are running out of time,” “26 years of blah, blah, blah,” and, “System change not climate change.”

The youth-led climate strike was organised by Fridays for Future, the international movement that has grown out of Greta Thunberg’s solo school strike that began in 2018. But local unions and other campaigns also gathered in solidarity.

Before Thunberg was scheduled to speak, activists from South America, Central America and Africa addressed the crowd, calling out their national leaders for failings in their home countries.

Veteran Extinction Rebellion climate activists stood alongside families with young children, union representatives, socialist campaigners and young students skipping school to demand greater action from world leaders to address the issue.

“There’s a real responsibility for young people that this will be ours to deal with,” said Eilidh Robb, 26, a Scottish climate activist. “And the mess that we didn’t create will be left to us to manage.”