Government leaders around the world will be hard-pressed to tune out the unprecedented youth-led climate strikes taking place Friday to demand nations take more aggressive action in curbing carbon emissions.More than a million protesters were expected to take to the streets in more than 150 countries as young people urge politicians to take climate change seriously and implement policies aimed at keeping global warming to a maximum of 1.5 degrees Celsius.The flagship event is taking place in New York City, where 16-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg is leading thousands of young people in a demonstration and march three days before world leaders gather there to attend the United Nations Climate Action Summit on Monday. Other protests are taking place in such cities as Canberra, London, Paris, Berlin, Johannesburg, Nairobi and Kabul. In some regions, children were officially given the day off school to attend the strikes; the New York City public school board gave permission to 1.1 million public school students to skip school to join that city’s protest, one of more than 800 events happening in the U.S. alone in all 50 states.Things were quieter Friday in Canada, which will see most of its major climate strikes take place on Sept. 27 in cities such as Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal, where Thunberg will be in attendance. More than 100 events are planned across Canada that day.The strikes began in Australia, where organizers estimated more than 300,000 protesters took to the streets in more than 100 cities, including Sydney and the capital Canberra. Demonstrators called for their country, the world’s largest exporter of coal and liquid natural gas, to take more drastic action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.“Even though we ourselves aren’t sick, the planet which we live on is, and we are protesting and fighting for it,” Siobhan Sutton, a 15-year-old student at Perth Modern School, told The Associated Press. In the U. ...
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