Thousands of youth strikers gather in Parliament Square in central London to protest the government’s lack of action on climate change. Wiktor Szymanowicz / Barcroft Media via Getty Images
Thousands of young people in the U.K. are up in arms — not about Brexit, or the latest royal family gossip, but about climate change.
Students walked out of schools today in cities across the U.K., and other parts of Europe — the latest demonstration in what has become a global youth climate strike. This movement started six months ago when Swedish teen Greta Thunberg began leaving school every Friday to protest on the steps of her country’s parliament. Thunberg’s environmental activism is still going strong, and she has delivered powerful speeches to both the U.N.and the World Economic Forum on the urgency of climate change.
They want leaders in government to:
- Declare a climate emergency and take “active steps to achieve climate justice”
- Adjust curriculum to make the ecological crisis a priority in public education
- Do more to communicate the severity of the problem to the general public
- Lower the voting age to 16, so that young people can have a voice in determining their future