Over 150K Angry Students Ditch School

They fear growing up in an altered climate
By Newser Editors and Wire Services
Posted Mar 16, 2019 10:10 AM CDT
Over 150K Students Skip Class to Protest
Thousands of students march from St Stephens Green to Leinster House, Dublin, Friday March 15, 2019.   (Niall Carson//PA via AP)

Students across a warming globe pleaded for their lives, future and planet Friday, demanding tough action on climate change, the AP reports. From the South Pacific to the edge of the Arctic Circle, angry students in more than 100 countries walked out of classes to protest what they see as the failures by their governments. Well more than 150,000 students and adults who were mobilized by word of mouth and social media protested in Europe, according to police estimates. But the initial turnout in the US did not look quite as high. "Borders, languages and religions do not separate us," eight-year-old Havana Chapman-Edwards, who calls herself the tiny diplomat, told hundreds of protesters at the US Capitol. "Today we are telling the truth and we do not take no for an answer."

Thousands of New York City students protested at locations including Columbus Circle, City Hall, and the American Museum of Natural History. Police said 16 protesters were arrested on disorderly conduct charges for blocking traffic at the museum. The coordinated "school strikes" were inspired by 16-year-old Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, who began holding solitary demonstrations outside the Swedish parliament last year. Since then, the weekly protests have snowballed from a handful of cities to hundreds, fueled by dramatic headlines about the impact of climate change during the students' lifetime. Unless emissions of heat-trapping gases start dropping dramatically, scientists estimate that the protesters will be in their 40s and 50s, maybe even 30s, when the world will reach dangerous levels of warming that international agreements are trying to prevent.

(More climate change stories.)

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