Youth Strike for Climate: London, Friday 24 May 2019
As we are expecting record May temperatures in the next few days and a summer with more deaths than ever from excessive heat, it is abundantly clear that the response of governments and politicians around the world to the climate crisis has for many years been woefully inadequate – and continues to be so.
Of course many of us have been pointing this out for many years, stressing the need for drastic changes to move away from the use of fossil fuels. As well as a huge shift to renewable energy this would also have needed dramatic changes in lifestyle in the industrialised countries and a move away from the politics and economics of greed and inequality.
Back in 2019 many young people saw we were heading towards catastrophe and failing globally to take effective steps to ameliorate the unavoidable crisis. They face a future world where temperatures will be generally several – perhaps five – degrees higher and our current global weather systems will be replaced by more extremes, with even more common fires and floods.
The younger you are now, the worse the problems will get in your lifetime, so it is hardly surprising that the young are more concented, and that many thousands around the world took part in a global climate strike against the lack of action by governments worldwide to combat the climate crisis in London in May 2019.
It was a protest with a great deal of energy, with a large crowd of mainly school students meeting in Parliament Square before marching past several ministries and staging a sit-down outside the Ministry of Education demanding that climate change becomes a vital aspect of the curriculum.
Clearly many school art departments were already getting involved, with protesters carrying an unusually numerous wide range of placards, for once hugely outnumbering those mass-produced by the Socialist Workers Party.
From there they marched back up Whitehall past Downing Street to hold a rally in front of Nelson’s Column, then returning to protest at the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy and finally going back to Parliament Square.
By then I think some police tempers were getting a little frayed and some students were manhandled rather aggressively off the road – and at least one minor was arrested.
I’d got tired with some often rather fast marching and the protest was still continuing when I decided it was time to go home.
Many more pictures at Youth Strike for Climate.
Flickr – Facebook – My London Diary – Hull Photos – Lea Valley – Paris
London’s Industrial Heritage – London Photos
All photographs on this page are copyright © Peter Marshall.
Contact me to buy prints or licence to reproduce.
