September 2019 housed the biggest climate mobilisation in history, with a record 7.6 million people protesting in the streets - striking for climate action.
Prior to these marches, young people have been walking out of school on Fridays to protest against the lack of government action on the climate emergency. The Climate Action Youth called on adults to join them for the September marches, and they were not disappointed.
These protests took place on Friday 20th and Friday 27th September, in 185 countries, in big cities, in small villages; millions of people of all ages came together to make themselves heard in a call for climate action.
What are people calling for?
Change and acknowledgment. The timeframe left to reverse climate change is now so small and fragile that the time of denying our responsibilities in taking action is long outdated and by far no longer serves us, the planet, and every species on it.
The people recognise governments need to accept this, accept their parts to play, and accept that time has run out for petty aversion games that have been played for too long - in the favour of financial retention and ‘economic growth’.
What people are trying to make governments understand is that there will be no economy to grow if we do not take action now.
For millions of people around the world, climate change is a crisis that arrived long ago; most of the people effected have contributed virtually nothing to the climate crisis, with supposedly just 100 multinational corporations being responsible for 71% of carbon emissions.
It is those in undeveloped countries without the financial infrastructure to protect their population from natural disaster and other repercussions of climate change that suffer the consequences implemented by the developed world.
What the Global Climate Strikes show is that the people have the power needed to rally together and set in motion the creation of a just world and the end of the fossil fuel era.