Tens Of Thousands Of New Zealand Children Kick Off New Climate Strikes

Tens of thousands of students gathered for marches across New Zealand on Friday to kick off a planned second global school strike for climate action.

The latest round of protests, which builds on last week’s marches by millions of children around the world, is planned to roll through Asia and Europe before culminating in a rally in Montreal, Canada, where teenage activist Greta Thunberg is scheduled to speak.

In New Zealand, scores of protests were held in towns and cities across the country with students carrying signs including “We’re skipping our lessons, so we can teach you one” and “You can’t comb over climate change”.

Organiser of School Strike 4 Climate NZ tweeted that it had received credible reports that 170,000 people were striking nationwide, a figure that would represent 3.5% of the country’s population.

Local media put the crowd in the capital of Wellington, where students were delivering a petition to the national parliament calling on the government to declare a climate emergency, at around 40,000.

New Zealand protesters were again ready to counter arguments that they should be in school, instead of out on the streets protesting.

“My education doesn’t matter if I have no future or if I have no land,” Elizabeth Glassie, a protestor in Auckland, told Radio New Zealand.

It comes after Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison suggested children should leave it to adults to sort out the global climate change crisis.

Greta Thunberg, who is credited with inspiring the school strikes, this week lambasted world leaders for a lack of climate change policies at the United Nations Climate Action summit in New York this week.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, who is in New York at the climate summit, on Thursday announced she had support from four other countries for a proposed new trade agreement to combat climate change.

Ardern said negotiations would begin with Norway, Iceland, Costa Rica and Fiji early next year, adding that she hoped other nations would sign on.

Reporting by Hans Lee (Reuters)