The first online climate strike will take place in the Czech Republic this Friday.
Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg has found a way to continue protesting climate change in the midst of coronavirus lockdown, by moving her Fridays for future initiative online. Starting this Friday, the 17-year-old will host a series of weekly webinars titled ‘talks for future’.
Journalist and activist Naomi Klein and Diarmid Campbell-Lendrum, climate change and health team leader of the World Health Organization, will be this Friday’s guests in the webinar to be streamed live at 2 p.m. GMT on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook.
Some politicians have called for climate action to be put on hold while governments grapple with the coronavirus, with the Czech Republic’s prime minister Andrej Babiš saying the European Union should “forget about the Green Deal now”.
“PM Andrej Babiš and Minister of Industry, Trade and Transport Karel Havlíček are trying to use crises to lay down European climate protection plans. CEZ also noticed the opportunity to help its dirty business and asked for an exemption from the emission limits for the Počerady power plant,” the students stated on Facebook on Tuesday.
“If one virus can wipe out the entire economy in a matter of weeks and shut down societies, then that is proof that our societies are not very resilient. It also shows that once we are in an emergency, we can act and we can change our behaviour quickly,” Greta Thunberg has urged.
The campaigner and the Fridays for Future movement, which she kick-started with her first school strike in 2018, have made their weekly protests virtual during the pandemic.
Students have been good at staying off the streets, said Thunberg, and although young people tend to have milder symptoms of the disease, “we still stand in solidarity with those in risk groups and I think that is a very beautiful thing.”
The movement led by Swedish activist Greta Thunberg quickly became a global phenomenon and has sought to bring world governments into full compliance with the 2015 Paris climate accord.
