We face the greatest threat that humanity has ever faced: climate change.

Today, I had the honor of introducing my daughter, one of the organizers of the student climate strike. ✊🏽 pic.twitter.com/skNjgWQjd7

— Rep. Ilhan Omar (@Ilhan) March 15, 2019

AFP reports:

Tens of thousands of young people skipped school across the globe on Friday to march through the streets for an international day of student protests aimed at pushing world leaders into action on climate change.

Classrooms in capitals from Bangkok to Berlin, Lagos to London emptied as as ambitious organisers of the student strike hoped to stage 1,000 demos in more than 100 countries.

As youngsters hit the streets in cities across the globe, nations meeting at the UN environment assembly in the Kenyan capital Nairobi announced that they had agreed to “significantly reduce” single-use plastics over the next decade.

But experts said the pledge—which only referred to man-made global warming and made no mention of the fossil fuels driving it—fell far short of the steps needed to tackling Earth’s burgeoning pollution crisis.

As the marathon talks drew to a close, students flooded into the streets across Europe and Asia carrying placards reading: “There is no planet B”, “You’re destroying our future” and “If you don’t act like adults, we will.”

Despite three decades of warnings, carbon dioxide emissions hit record levels in 2017 and again last year.

Loading the atmosphere with greenhouse gases at current rates will eventually lead to an uninhabitable planet, scientists say.

In Stockholm, Swedish teen activist Greta Thunberg who inspired the protests, was thronged by journalists and several dozen protesters, one carrying a banner declaring “Make the Climate Greta Again”.

“We are living through an existential crisis that has been ignored for decades and if we do not act now it may be too late,” the 16-year-old told Swedish public television station SVT.

Thunberg has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for her activism. [Continue reading…]