NEW YORK (AP) - The Latest on the global climate protests being held in cities around the world (all times local):
8:25 p.m.
In downtown Los Angeles, hundreds of people, many of them schoolchildren, marched to City Hall for a rally.
Some wore yellow T-shirts urging “Say no to fossil fuels.” Protest signs included round ones portraying a burning globe and the warnings: “Our house is on fire” and “It’s time to panic.”
Actors Don Cheadle and Jane Fonda joined in the demonstration.
Mayor Eric Garcetti thanked the crowd for “supporting the Green New Deal, right here.”
“It is time for us to have our 100% zero emission buildings, our 100% zero emission electricity, and our 100% zero emission transportation,” he said. “That is our goal. Nothing less.”
Garcetti praised the students who skipped classes, saying: “Do we want to look back at this day and tell our students they should stay in school? Hell no! Take to the streets and claim your future!”
Earlier, Garcetti announced at a local high school that he was forming a Youth Council on Climate Action, composed of 17 high school and college students, to “help drive the city’s strategy and policies to confront the climate crisis.”
Around California, high schoolers from Sacramento to San Diego walked out of classes to join in climate change protests.
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8:05 p.m.
Thousands of people young and old are urging action on climate change with protests throughout the San Francisco Bay Area, including in San Francisco, Berkeley and San Jose.
They are among the climate protests held worldwide on Friday.
In San Francisco, young people swarmed downtown as they waved colorful handmade signs and chanted, “Hey-hey, ho-ho, climate change has got to go.”
A man carried a giant ball swirled like Planet Earth.
Alex Unger, a high school student from Rohnert Park, California, said it was important to encourage other young people to be involved “because we’re the ones who are going to be here longer.”
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7:45 p.m.
Weeks after Brazil drew global concern over a spike in fires in the Amazon rainforest, around 200 people gathered for the climate strike in downtown Rio de Janeiro.
Small protests took place in other cities across the country Friday.
Protesters criticized President Jair Bolsonaro, who says conservation efforts restrict Brazil’s economic development and has weakened environmental protection agencies.
Several indigenous people from the Amazon region wore face paint and feather headdresses to the protest. They sang a prayer to an indigenous God asking for the removal of Bolsonaro and reversal of his pro-development policies in the Amazon region.
Bolsonaro said on Facebook a day earlier that the outcry over the Amazon was designed to diminish Brazil’s dominance in the agricultural sector. He’ll travel to New York for the U.N. General Assembly and give a speech Tuesday.
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3:45 p.m.
Hundreds of mainly young demonstrators are marching through downtown Mexico City, chanting “political change, not climate change!”
That was an apparent reference to President Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador’s push to increase production and processing of fossil fuels.
The mainly youthful crowd at Friday’s protest suggested young people were taking the lead on the issue.
High school student Maria Martinez carried a sign that read: “You’ll die of old age; I’ll die of climate change.”
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3:35 p.m.
Hundreds of Amazon workers walked out of their offices to raise awareness of climate change.
The tech workers’ rally Friday was part of a series of global climate protests, including one with thousands of young people in Seattle.
The employees held signs, some made from recycled Amazon boxes, that urged the company to stop dealing with oil and gas companies and to not make political contributions to people who deny climate change.
The workers gathered at the Spheres structure on the company’s campus near downtown Seattle.
Amazon, which ships more than 10 billion items a year, vowed Thursday to cut its use of fossil fuels. It said it had ordered 100,000 electric vans to deliver packages beginning in 2021.
Software developer Vaibhav Desai said at the rally “if Amazon cannot achieve this, I don’t know which company can.”
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3:20 p.m.
Google employees are joining other tech workers across the U.S. in marching for action on climate change.
About 60 employees gathered in downtown San Francisco and marched to join a larger, student-led climate strike in the city. One held a sign reading: “Google Do Better.”
Amazon employees started the tech workers movement for climate action. Google employees echoed their demands, calling for the company to commit to zero carbon emissions by 2030 and to stop doing business with fossil fuel companies.
More than 1,000 Google employees signed a pledge asking for the company to take action.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai told the Financial Times that the call for zero emissions by 2030 was not “unreasonable.”
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2:25 p.m.
Hundreds of high school students shouted “Miami is under attack” at a protest at Miami Beach’s city hall.
They were underlining their concerns over climate-related sea rise in their coastal city as they joined the global climate strike Friday.
Sixteen-year-old Aleksandar Demetriades said: “I’m scared that I am going to lose my house” and that climate change is one of his generation’s defining issues.
With a coastline stretching 1,350 miles (2,170 kilometers), Florida faces some of the gravest risks from rising ocean levels.
In the Florida capital, 17-year-old Jessica Cao got her parents’ permission to skip classes to join scores of activists in Tallahassee.
Cao said: “It’s not cutting class if I’m doing it for the planet.” She added that she feared U.S. leaders weren’t listening.
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This item has been updated to correct that Cao is 17, not 14.
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2:15 p.m.
Hundreds of people have gathered outside the Capitol in Richmond, Virginia, to take part in a wave of global protests demanding action on climate change.
Speakers at the rally Friday included a number of children who spoke about fearing for their futures.
The crowd of about 200 people chanted: “Climate change is not a lie. Do not let our planet die.”
People held signs that said: “There is no Planet B,” and “Leave a livable world for our youth.” One woman waved an American flag.
Dozens of people left the rally and marched to the offices of Dominion Energy, where they protested a natural gas pipeline the company is developing with other energy companies.
The company, which has committed to reducing its carbon emissions, says the Atlantic Coast Pipeline is urgently needed.
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2:10 p.m.
Tens of thousands of mostly young people have overflowed a New York City square as U.S. activists join a wave of climate change protests unfolding around the world.
Demonstrators rallied Friday with signs bearing such messages as “climate change is real” and “protect the earth, not the corporations.” Then the group began marching through lower Manhattan streets.
New York City public schools say student absences for the climate strike will be excused, if the students have parental permission.
Thirteen-year-old protester Pearl Seidman says she’s there with a message for President Donald Trump’s administration: “If they can’t be adults, we’re going to be adults. Because someone needs to do it.”
Trump announced in 2017 he was withdrawing the United States from the international Paris agreement to fight global warming.
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2 p.m.
About 80 young people have gathered outside the Rio de Janeiro state legislature, some carrying signs saying “SOS Amazonia” and “Save our future.”
One protester held up a sign that said “Rio 2050” and showed the city’s landmarks underwater, with the iconic Christ the Redeemer statue’s head poking out.
Brazil found itself at the center of the global conversation about climate change in recent months when an increase in fires in its Amazon region caused an international outcry.
The protesters on Friday said far-right President Jair Bolsonaro’s administration was doing too little.
Julia de Oliveira is a 16-year-old high school student. She said: “Having this discourse of being climate change deniers will produce no result. We need this government to open its eyes.”
School teacher Yuri Diniz Leite says Brazil must recognize the privilege of having so much of the Amazon in its territory.
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1:10 p.m.
Several thousand protesters - many of them high school age or younger - are marching to the Capitol building in Washington. They are carrying signs that read: “There is no Planet B” and “This can’t wait until I finish school.”
A.J. Conermann is a 15-year old sophomore from Washington. He said: “Our Earth is dying and if we don’t do something about it, we die.”
Many of the young protesters spoke bitterly about the inability of their parents’ generation to seriously confront the growing climate change threat.
Jessica Kulp says it is “sad” that kids are doing “the adults’ jobs.”
The 8th grader from nearby Silver Spring, Maryland, carried a sign that read: “Sorry I can’t clean my room. I have to save the planet.”
People are rallying in cities around the world Friday to call for action on climate change.
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12:35 p.m.
Hundreds of people across the Balkans have held protest marches as part of a day of global action against climate change.
Demonstrations were held throughout Friday in several cities in Bosnia, Croatia, Montenegro and Serbia. Participants demanded action to protect the environment and address pollution.
In the southern Bosnian city of Mostar, about 100 high school students held a protest march. Some held banners that read: “Save the World” and “Our home is burning!”
Several hundred young people have gathered in Split, a town on Croatia’s Adriatic Sea coast, carrying a huge banner that urged, “Split, wake up!” Activists warned Split could face flooding due to global warming.
Dozens of people also marched through Serbia’s capital Belgrade and in Montenegro’s capital Podgorica.
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12:25 p.m.
The 16-year-old activist who sparked the global climate strike movement says she never imagined it would take off so quickly.
Greta Thunberg told The Associated Press on Friday that she watched news of strikes in Australia and the Pacific before she went to bed in New York the night before.
She called the large numbers of people protesting “a victory.”
She says: “I would never have predicted or believed that this was going to happen someday and so fast.”
She said it was now up to world leaders to take action. She said if they don’t, they should “feel ashamed.”
Rallies calling for action on climate change are happening in cities around the world Friday ahead of a summit on the issue.
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This item has been corrected to show that Thunberg is 16, not 17.
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12 p.m.
Teenagers and kids as young as 10 in Paris traded classrooms for the streets to call on their government to do more to combat climate change.
Chanting “anti-capitalism” and “join us, don’t watch us,” they marched Friday from the Place de la Nation to Parc de Bercy. The demonstration took on a festival-like feel as bands played and kids danced in the eastern Paris park.
Marie-Lou Sahai is 15. She says she skipped school because “the only way to make people listen is to protest.”
High school student Gaspard Mary says he decided to join the march since “it’s us, and our kids afterward, who will be affected” by inaction on climate change.
Similar rallies are being held in cities around the globe.
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10:55 a.m.
Residents of Africa’s most populous city, Lagos in Nigeria, have joined a global day of demonstrations over climate change.
The low-lying city of more than 20 million people is among the many African coastal cities at risk from flooding due to global warming.
The continent is particularly vulnerable to climate change because it has the least-developed infrastructure to deal with it.
Environmentalist Desmond Majekodunmi says for the first time all of humanity faces a threat to their very existence, “so the only way we can overcome that problem is by coming together, forgetting our differences.”
He calls on people around the world to summon “the natural love that lies within all of us” and fight for survival.
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10:30 a.m.
Thousands of school pupils and their adult supporters have gathered outside the British Parliament in London to demand “climate justice” and stronger action to tackle global warming.
A large crowd filled London’s government district, and there were also rallies in U.K. cities including Birmingham, Glasgow and Belfast, as part of a “Global Climate Strike.”
Some demonstrators held home-made placards with slogans including “Don’t be a fossil fool” and “Make our planet Greta again,” a reference to 16-year-old activist Greta Thunberg, who sparked the global climate strike movement.
The British government said it endorsed the protesters’ message but didn’t condone skipping school.
Jessica Ahmed, a 16-year-old London student, said that “if politicians were taking the appropriate action we need and had been taking this action a long time ago when it was recognized the world was changing in a negative way, then I would not have to be skipping school. I would be doing the maths exam I have studied for.”
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This item has been corrected to show that Thunberg is 16, not 17.
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8:55 a.m.
People in northern Europe took part in world-wide protests of government inaction on climate change, including thousands who marched and chanted in the rain through Denmark’s capital
A sign reading “Lawmaker: know your climate” stood out in a sea of umbrellas during the event in Copenhagen on Friday. Smaller demonstrations were held in other Danish cities.
Protester Nanna Lindbaek Qvesel said during a march in Viborg that the purpose of the global rallies was “to make ourselves heard to the politicians.”
In Finland’s capital, Helsinki, a man dressed as Santa Claus stood outside Parliament holding a sign that said, “My house is on fire, my reindeer can’t swim.”
A rally in Sweden’s capital of Stockholm snaked through downtown behind a banner reading “School strike for climate.” That’s the slogan Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg used when she started skipping classes once a week to protest climate change.
Thunberg’s stand inspired students in more and more nations, making her an international activist. She is expected to speak at the U.N. Climate Action Summit on Monday.
Students in countries around the world skipped school to take part in the second “Global Climate Strike.”
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8:30 a.m.
Poland’s president and first lady have helped remove trash from a forest as part of a day of global action against climate change.
President Andrzej Duda said the forest cleanup was a way to care for the environment and stressed that protests calling for climate protections are being held around the world Friday.
Duda and first lady Agata Kornhauser-Duda joined school students in central Poland’s Puszcza Biala forest to pick up trash.
Students in many countries are skipping school to take part in the second “Global Climate Strike.” The events in the run-up to a U.N. summit in New York are demanding that leaders tackle climate change
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7:50 a.m.
Thousands of students are rallying in Prague and dozens of towns and cities across the Czech Republic as part of a global protest against climate change.
In Prague, they gathered in the downtown Old Town Square, waving numerous banners that read “More love, less coal,” ’’Science, not silence,” or “Why should we go to universities when they don’t listen to the educated?” before marching through the city.
Many are voicing their displeasure with what they say are inadequate steps the Czech government has been taking to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Organizers say rallies are taking place in about 40 places across the country.
In neighboring Slovakia, President Zuzana Caputova has thrown her weight behind thousands of students who are rallying in four major cities, including the capital of Bratislava.
Caputova, who is attending next week’s conference on global warming at the United Nations, says she is welcoming their initiative.
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7:45 a.m.
Thousands of students are rallying in Prague and dozens of towns and cities across the Czech Republic as part of a global protest to urge the governments to do more to tackle climate change.
In Prague, the gathered at Prague’s downtown Old Town Square, waving numerous banners that read “More love, less coal,” ’’Science, not silence,” or “Why we should go to universities when they don’t listen to the educated?” before marching through the city.
Many are voicing their displeasure with what they say are inadequate steps the Czech government has been taking to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Organizers say rallies are taking place in about 40 places across the country.
In neighboring Slovakia, President Zuzana Caputova has thrown her weight behind thousands of students who are rallying in four major cities, including the capital of Bratislava.
Caputova, who is attending next week’s conference on global warming at the United Nations, says she is welcoming their initiative. She says “the pressure they create by their activities … is extremely needed for Slovakia, Europe and the entire world.”
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7:30 a.m.
In the Afghan capital Kabul, where people are dying every day in horrific bomb attacks, a young generation, worried that if war doesn’t kill them climate change will, took part in the global climate strike.
About 100 young people, with several young women in the front carrying a banner emblazoned with “Fridays for future”, marched through central Kabul, following behind an armored personnel carrier deployed for their protection as well as half a dozen army personnel with automatic rifles scattered behind them and along the route.
Fardeen Barakzai, one of the organizers and head of the local save-the-climate group called Oxygen said “we want to do our part. We as the youth of our country know the problem of climate change. We know war can kill a group of people … the problem in Afghanistan is our leaders are fighting for power but the real power is in nature.”
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6:10 a.m.
More than 30 heads of state and government have signed an appeal for greater action to fight climate change circulated by Austrian president Alexander Van der Bellen ahead of next week’s conference on global warming at the United Nations.
The Initiative for more Climate Ambition declares climate change the “key challenge of our time,” adding that “our generation is the first to experience the rapid increase in temperatures around the globe and probably the last with the opportunity to effectively combat an impending global climate crisis.”
It says countries need to act “jointly, decisively and swiftly.”
German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier’s office said Friday he was among the signatories, others of whom included French President Emmanuel Macron, Israeli President Reuven Rivlin and Netherlands Prime Minister Mark Rutte.
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6:05 a.m.
Hundreds of people have marched in some African cities to highlight the dangers of climate change.
Banners in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, ranged from angry to playful, with one reading: “This planet is getting hotter than my imaginary boyfriend.”
Other climate protests - part of a global strike on Friday ahead of a United Nations climate summit - are taking place in Johannesburg and the South African capital, Pretoria.
The hundreds of people gathered in Johannesburg chanted and waved signs saying “Climate justice now” and “There’s only one Earth.”
Experts say Africa is the most vulnerable continent to climate change and the least equipped to deal with it. Governments have pleaded for more support from the international community.
Some of the most threatened African nations are also in the grip of conflict, such as Somalia.
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5:55 a.m.
Thousands of young people are marching in coal-reliant Poland to demand that their elders fight global warming and protect the climate.
Many middle schools gave students a day off Friday to enable them to take part in the global climate protest. Colorful marches with banners reading “There is NO Planet B” walked through the capital Warsaw and many other cities.
Government critics say it is dragging its feet on its program of subsidies for families who do away with their coal-burning heaters that are largely responsible for smog, especially in southern regions.
A coal-producing nation with tens of thousands of jobs in mining, Poland relies for some 80% of its energy on fossil fuels. The government’s plan for phasing coal out is slow paced, reaching to 2050.
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5:30 a.m.
Dozens of Filipino activists have marched in Manila to honor the memory of activists in the Philippines who were killed for defending the environment.
They marched to the offices of the Environment and Natural Resources Department, then staged a die-in protest on Friday while holding a banner saying ’Stop the killings. Defend the environment defenders now!”
The group Global Witness says the Philippines had the highest number of killings of environmental defenders of any country in 2018, with at least 30 murdered.
A separate rally organized by various student groups gathered in the afternoon at the state university. Hundreds participated as each of the students bunched together to hold up placards forming an image of the earth, with a big sign that said, “There is no Planet B.”
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4:50 a.m.
The wave of global climate protests has reached Europe, with activists staging small scale demonstrations in several German cities.
Police said several dozen activists blocked a road in the heart of Frankfurt, Germany’s financial capital, on Friday morning. In Berlin, protesters blocked a bridge across the river Spree.
Organizers say that more than 500 events are planned across Germany.
Under pressure from sustained protests over the past months, the government of Chancellor Angela Merkel is planning to announce a package of measures to reduce Germany’s greenhouse gas emissions later Friday.
Despite big investments in renewable energy that made up 46% of the country’s electricity production in the second quarter of 2019, Germany is on course to miss its emissions reduction targets for 2020 by a wide margin.
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3:50 a.m.
About 50 people in Hong Kong have found a different reason to protest in their city’s summer of pro-democracy demonstrations: climate change.
Carrying banners and posters, they are chanting “stop the pollution” as they march along the harbor front Friday under a blazing sun as part of a day of demonstrations taking place in cities around the world.
Organizer Dhanada Mishra, a visiting scholar at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, says that the younger generations will be seriously affected when the impacts of climate change are felt in the coming decade and beyond.
He says it is appropriate that young people should speak out and demand that their future is not jeopardized by government inaction.
Protester Nayla Ventura says it’s only fair to show her two children that it’s ok for them to fight for their future.
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3:40 a.m.
Dozens of students and environmental activists have gathered at a rally in India’s capital urging immediate action to combat climate change.
The demonstrators assembled Friday outside India’s Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs in New Delhi.
They chanted slogans like “We want climate action” and “I want to breathe clean” as part of a day of worldwide demonstrations ahead of a U.N. climate summit in New York.
They also carried banners with some displaying messages like “There is no earth B” and “Eco, not ego!”
Aman Sharma, a 16-year-old protester, said: “We need to reclaim our constitutional right to clean air and water.”
Police watched the demonstrators at a distance.
Many other such gatherings were planned across cities in India.
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3:25 a.m.
Hundreds of people have marched in the streets of the Thai capital to demand the government take measures to deal with the climate change crisis.
An organizer of the protest says about 250 people, mostly children with their parents, took part in Friday’s protest. Many were Westerners.
The organizer, 21-year-old Nanticha Ocharoenchai, says the demonstrators stopped at the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment to submit an open letter demanding the government declare a climate emergency, ban coal energy by 2025 and completely replace fossil fuel energy with renewable energy by 2040.
The protesters staged a “die-in” outside the ministry to dramatize their concerns, lying down on the pavement with many clutching home-made signs with slogans such as “Clean air is our right.”
Similar protests are being held in cities around the world.
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2:55 a.m.
Organizers estimate more than 300,000 protesters have taken to Australian streets in climate action rallies in what would be the largest demonstrations the country has seen since the Iraq war.
School Strike 4 Climate says in a statement 265,000 protesters turned out at demonstrations in seven cities alone. The largest crowd was an estimated 100,000 in Melbourne and 80,000 in Sydney.
Most police services declined to release their own crowd estimates.
Organizers put the crowd in Brisbane at 30,000, while police estimated 12,000. Organizers said 15,000 rallied in Canberra, but police said 7,000.
Australian police have a reputation for underestimating by half crowd number at protests.
Protests were staged in 110 towns and cities across Australia, a country with a population of 25 million.
Similar rallies are planned in cities around the globe ahead of a U.N. climate summit in New York.
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