Updated at 9 a.m. ET
Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators, including many young activists, are rallying together to call for action on climate change Friday, with events taking place around the world. Students are skipping school to take part — and in some cases, their teachers and parents are joining them.
Some of the first rallies began in Australia; more soon followed, from Pacific islands to India and Turkey and across Europe, as students kicked off the Global Climate Strike.
With more than 800 marches planned in the U.S., thousands of young people are expected to skip school Friday. Swedish teenage activist Greta Thunberg, the leader of the climate school strike movement, will attend a rally in New York’s Thomas Paine Park.
Similar rallies are getting underway in dozens of countries, including the United Kingdom, France and Germany, where Chancellor Angela Merkel plans to announce government measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
“Chanting, ‘The time is now’ for action on climate change, thousands of people gathered at Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate, forcing police to close access to the monument due to overcrowding,” NPR’s Rob Schmitz reports from Berlin. “Thousands more gathered in Warsaw, and Prague. In Finland, crowds of demonstrators in costumes protested outside parliament in Helsinki. One man dressed as Santa Claus held a sign declaring “My House is on Fire.’ “
The protests come ahead of a planned U.N. Climate Action Summit that begins in New York on Monday. In March, a similar protest inspired by Thunberg drew crowds around the world, including thousands of young students who skipped school to attend.
In Athens, thousands of students gathered outside the Greek Parliament, with some of them holding signs that read, “Raise your voice, not the sea level.”
Organizers say more than 300,000 people gathered at more than 100 rallies in cities across Australia, most notably in Melbourne, where an estimated 100,000 turned out and Sydney, which reportedly saw 80,000 attend. Tens of thousands more are said to have marched in the capital, Canberra, as well as Perth, Brisbane and Adelaide.
The numbers of participants could not be immediately verified.
In Sydney, Moemoana, 18, came from Wollongong to protest on behalf of her native Samoa, one of thousands of low-lying islands around the world that are particularly threatened by rising sea levels due to climate change.
“The Pacific Islands are meters above sea level because of climate change and it’s a scary future for our islands,” she was quoted by The Guardian Australia as saying. “We want to urge people to take some action.”
Australia is the world’s largest exporter of coal and liquefied natural gas – both major contributors to greenhouse gas emissions. Protesters marched to demand that government and businesses commit to a goal of net zero carbon emissions by 2030.
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who is in the U.S. for a state dinner with President Trump, has been criticized for not including the U.N. climate summit on his itinerary.
At least 2,000 companies in Australia gave employees time off to attend the rallies, according to The Sydney Morning Herald. Meanwhile, the country’s acting prime minister, Michael McCormack, speaking in Melbourne, called the rallies “just a disruption” and expressed displeasure with students attending the protests.
“These sorts of rallies should be held on a weekend where it doesn’t actually disrupt business, it doesn’t disrupt schools, it doesn’t disrupt universities,” McCormack told reporters according to The Associated Press.
In Kirabati, a Pacific island chain that experts fear could be inundated by sea level rise in the next 25 years, some signs carried by protesters read: “We are not sinking, we are fighting.”
Some 200 young activists marched to the Ministry of Environment in Bangkok, Thailand, where they dropped to the ground in mock death to demand that the government declare a climate emergency.
“We’re young, but we’re not dumb. We know it’s happening. We need change. We demand better,” 11-year-old Ralyn “Lilly” Satidtanasarn told The Bangkok Post.
In India, dozens of students and activists rallied in the capital, New Delhi, outside the country’s Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, carrying banners that read “Eco, not ego!” and chanting “I want to breathe clean.”
Copyright 2019 NPR. To see more, visit NPR.