The Magazine of The Sierra Club
Friday’s Global Climate Strike in Pictures
Youth activists take to the streets to #UprootTheSystem
Led by Greta Thunberg and Luisa Neubauer, tens of thousands of protesters marched in front of the German parliament on Friday, just two days before the country’s national elections. The masses called for stronger action from governments, advocating for the continued pressure on politicians to act on climate issues. “We can still turn this around,” Thunberg said. “We demand change, and we are the change.” | Photo by Sven Görlich
Members of Drama for Life, an arts program at the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa, put on colorful costumes and gave a dramatic demonstration in support of climate action. | Photo courtesy of University of Witwatersrand
Fridays for Future Delhi marched to the Delhi Secretariat—workplace of Gopal Rai, the minister for environment, forest and wildlife, development and general administration in the Delhi government—and presented environmental concerns that include air, water, and noise pollution. “The various issues of caste, class, and gender put the most vulnerable sections of society to face the brunt of the climate crisis,” FFF Delhi wrote on Friday on its Instagram profile. | Photo courtesy of Fridays for Future Delhi
As part of its National Decarbonization Plan, Costa Rica banned fossil fuel exploration through 2050. Now the government is considering a permanent extension of this ban, eliminating any possibility of reversal. Activists gathered in San José, the country’s capital, and braved a tropical storm to voice their support for the indefinite measure. | Photo by Gabriel Abarca Rodríguez
Over 500 people marched in São Sepé, which this June became only the second city in Brazil to formally recognize the global climate emergency. While nearby regions in southern Brazil continue their dependence on coal, São Sepé, a city of 25,000, is building a solar energy plant and seeking to develop its wind sector. | Photo by Eco Pelo Clima
Staff from Youth for Green Communities met in Mbarara, Uganda, and marched with handmade signs for more than 15 miles. They called on President Yoweri Museveni to pass into law the National Climate Change Bill, which unanimously passed Uganda’s parliament last year. | Photo courtesy of Youth for Green Communities
The tourism industry has long polluted and shrunk Cancún’s natural coastline and mangrove forests. Activists gathered and marched on Friday in front of the city’s “Cancun 50” signage, which celebrates the 50th anniversary of the first resort opening on the beachfront. | Photo by Luis Enrique Durán Flores
Fridays for Future Osaka participated via Zoom in an event titled “We have to talk about system change.” Activists discussed greenhouse gases and transportation, how the media should report on climate change, and how individuals can take control of their actions, even amid the larger systems that dominate society. | Photo by Masamichi Kobayashi
Bahía Blanca, which means “white bay,” is a coastal city in Argentina near the southern Atlantic Ocean. Activists on Friday called for better protections for the region’s extensive wetland estuaries, where three species of migratory sea turtles spend their summers. Protesters also called for better implementation of the 2018 Escazú Agreement, a treaty that guarantees the public better access to environmental information and decision-making in Latin America and the Caribbean. Of the 24 countries that signed on, only 12, including Argentina, have since ratified the treaty. | Photo by Gero Fullana and Rosario Coll
Nearly 100 people gathered in front of the Aruban parliament on Friday, and many others participated with a “ShoeStrike”—the act of leaving one’s shoes in a public space with a sign or message nearby, a safe alternative to protesting in a pandemic. Over 700 signatures were gathered for a petition that calls upon the government to act swiftly on climate change and environmental loss on the island country. | Photo by Anita Aerts
Activists in the Philippines continue to resist the development of Manila Bay Beach, an artificial strip of coastline that imports sand made from crushed dolomite. The white substance gives an appearance of cleanliness, but scientists say it poses health risks for humans, the bay’s aquatic birds, and other nearby marine life. Nonetheless, as millions of dollars fund the project, the environmental risks of the controversial beach project may soon be moot—metropolitan Manila is predicted to be underwater within 30 years, a result of rising sea levels and a main focus of Friday for Future Philippines’s climate strikes. | Photo by Maria Emcel Mesa
A number of motivated students came together to advocate for climate justice at the University of Amsterdam. The idea found roots with graduate law students and quickly spread throughout different faculties and disciplines. Students wanted to support the Fridays For Future movement in Amsterdam, and so they did. | Photo by Delia Graetz
In Rome, student protesters brought attention to the Paris Agreement’s goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2030. | Photo by Elisa Colombiano
Friday, September 24, marked the first time climate activists returned to the streets en masse since the coronavirus struck in 2020. More than 1,400 protests took place around the world, including about 300 in the United States. On the cusp of an important election in Germany, at least half a million protesters gathered in Berlin, where Greta Thunberg gave a stirring speech, telling the crowd, “There's no going back now. We can still turn this around. People are ready for change. We want change, we demand change, and we are the change."
Thunberg famously began weekly sit-ins in front of the Swedish Parliament in 2018, inspiring thousands of young people around the world to join her in protesting inaction on climate change. In September 2019, at least 7 million people participated in global climate strikes. Now, after stalling in the face of the global pandemic, climate strikes are intensifying again as activists gear up for a series of United Nations meetings on climate change that culminate in early November at COP26.
The rallying cry for Friday’s mass mobilization was “Uproot the System.” Fridays for Future activists, who coordinated the global event, aimed to draw attention to multiple overlapping crises and highlight the ways the capitalist system exploits poorer countries, which also suffer the worst impacts of climate change.
Mitzi Jonelle Tan, a youth activist in the Philippines, told Sierra via email, “With this strike, the Fridays for Future movement is focusing on the systemic roots of the climate crisis and how it intersects with all other socioeconomic crises and systems of oppression and injustice.”
She and other activists are demanding that world leaders come up with concrete action plans to drastically cut emissions, phase out fossil fuels, and provide reparations to the Global South from the Global North for its outsized role in causing the climate crisis.
Here’s a snapshot of some of the protests held around the world.