SYDNEY: Hundreds of thousands of students and workers left their schools, colleges and offices on Friday and marched along city streets around the globe to demand that world leaders take urgent action to avert an environmental catastrophe.

The global climate strike, inspired by 16-year-old Swe­dish activist Greta Thun­berg, kicked off in the Paci­fic islands and followed the rising sun across Australia, Japan, Southeast Asia and then on to Europe, Africa, the Middle East and the Americas. Some of the banners at a march in Brussels said: “Cool kids save the hot planet”, “I won’t go to school until you make it cool” and “The warm earth destroys our cold beer.”

Protesters in about 150 countries called on governments to take immediate act­ion to limit the harmful eff­ects of manmade climate change. Social media posts showed scores of demonstrations, ranging from a few dozen primary schoolchildren in Abuja, Nigeria, to tens of thousands of people in cities from Hamburg, in Germany, to Melbourne, Australia.

Published in Dawn, September 21st, 2019