Thousands took part in the Global Climate Strike Friday in Victoria to demand action from world leaders on the climate crisis.
The Global Climate Strike Week of Action began last Friday and saw strikes, pickets and card cut-up events across the city throughout the week.
Thousands of people have flood the BC Legislature lawn in support of today’s #GlobalClimateStrikes @VictoriaNews pic.twitter.com/xOIYv3tM4q
— kendra crighton (@kendracrighton) September 27, 2019
Students who walked out of class to head to the protest at the B.C. Legislature will not be punished for skipping class say Greater Victoria school districts, but they did need parental permission.
RELATED: Students skip school, join climate strikes across B.C.
More than 150 countries across the world are participating in the strike.
On Monday, Greta Thunberg delivered a scathing rebuke to world leaders at the United Nations climate summit in New York City.
— kendra crighton (@kendracrighton) September 27, 2019
“For more than 30 years the science has been crystal clear,” she told them. “How dare you look away.”
Also on Monday, she filed a complaint with 15 other children alleging five UN members – Argentina, Brazil, France, Germany, and Turkey – failed to uphold their obligations under the Convention on the Rights of the Child by not doing enough to stop the climate crisis.
RELATED: Students won’t be punished for missing class for climate walkouts, says local school districts
Thunberg said they are the five biggest emitters who signed the convention, though Canada ratified the convention in 1991 and has annual greenhouse-gas emissions greater than all but Germany in that list.
The world’s biggest emitters, including China and the United States, did not ratify the convention.
Climate Strike Canada has a list of demands that includes:
- Canada’s recognizing its “disproportionate role” in the climate crisis.
- Enshrining the right to a healthy environment in law.
- Rejecting any new fossil fuel development or transportation projects.
- Setting “bold” targets to cut greenhouse-gas emissions to just one-quarter of what they were in 2005 by 2030.
Canada’s current goal is to cut them to 70 per cent of 2005 levels by 2030, though Trudeau and May have both promised to exceed that and to make Canada carbon neutral by 2050.
– With files from Devon Bidal and Ashley Wadhwani
kendra.crighton@blackpress.caFollow us on Instagram
