Fridays For Future Is Back

At more than 1,500 demonstrations worldwide, youth protesters are hitting the streets, again, in the first large-scale, Fridays for Future protests since the start of the pandemic. The protests coincided with the UN General Assembly in New York, and also come as activists and global leaders prepare for the COP26 climate summit in November. Greta Thunberg joined one of the biggest protests on Friday in Berlin, which also came days before Germany’s national elections, where youth exasperated by the lack of action led hunger strikes that drove some into wheelchairs. Olaf Scholz and the Social Democratic Party won a plurality in Sunday’s elections. Scholz said the victory gave a mandate to “modernize our industrial sector and to halt the man-made climate change.” (Fridays for Future: Washington Post $, Thomson Reuters Foundation, AP, InsideClimate News, Reuters, CNN; Germany: Reuters, Washington Post $, AP; Election results: New York Times $)