More than 1,000 people demonstrated on Saturday in Australia’s biggest cities, Sydney and Melbourne, protesting the Australian government’s climate policies and the strategies it offered at the UN climate summit in Glasgow.
Sydney’s first legal protest after a months-long COVID-19 lockdown called for global action during the COP26 summit.
Marchers carried signs reading, “We need human change, not climate change” and “Code Red for Humanity,” in images captured by Reuters.
After one week of speeches and pledges at the two-week gathering in Glasgow, COP26 brought promises to phase out coal, reduce emissions of the potent greenhouse gas methane and cut deforestation.
Australia, however, has rejected the global methane pledge.
Some protesters dressed as lumps of coal or Prime Minister Scott Morrison, a vigorous defender of the mining industry, labeled the COP26 talks “a sham” and their national leader “an absolute embarrassment”.
Delegates from nearly 200 countries are in Glasgow to hammer out how to meet the Paris Agreement goals of limiting temperature rises to between 1.5 and 2 degrees Celsius.
So far, some countries have signed up to pledges to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, with separate deals on phasing out coal, ending foreign fossil fuel funding, and slashing methane.
However, worldwide campaigners have been left unimpressed by the UN summit, with the young environmental activist Greta Thunberg calling the COP a “failure”.
From Paris to Sydney, Nairobi to Seoul, more than 200 events were planned worldwide on Saturday to demand immediate action for communities already affected by climate change, particularly in the poorer ones.
add your comment
Terms of publication : Not to offend the writer, people, sacred things, or attack religions or the divine self, and refrain from racist incitement and insults.