Status: 09/23/2022 3:50 p.m
The “Fridays for Future” movement had called the global climate strike for today – and numerous people in more than 250 cities followed the call. In Berlin alone, 22,000 took to the streets for climate justice.
In numerous cities in Germany, several tens of thousands of people demonstrated for more climate protection. The mostly young demonstrators followed a call by the “Fridays for Future” movement for a worldwide “climate strike”. A rally took place in Berlin, where police said more than 22,000 people gathered near the government district.
Eleventh global protest call
Thousands of people also took part in rallies in Hamburg and other large cities. In other cities, the officials did not want to provide any information on the number of participants.
People also took to the streets in many other countries. It was the organization’s eleventh call for a global protest since its inception in 2018. The “Fridays for Future” activist Luisa Neubauer called out at the rally in Berlin: “Anyone who thinks that there is no way out, only despair remains. If you know that there is another way, you can get started and act. We have the knowledge, so let’s get started.”
Supported by art, culture and church
Many members of the Evangelical Church also took part in devotions and prayers: “We want to work to ensure that we as humanity can live well on this planet, that we live sustainably, not at the expense of future generations,” said the President of the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland, Thorsten Latzel, in a video message.
Latzel referred to the already noticeable consequences of man-made climate change and named the flood disaster in North Rhine-Westphalia and Rhineland-Palatinate last year and the drought in parts of Europe as examples. “But especially in the Global South you feel the effects of our way of life,” he said. A third of Pakistan is currently under water.
100 billion euros for climate protection
The climate protectors are calling for an exit from fossil fuels, the rapid expansion of renewable energies and a “consistent turnaround in traffic”. 100 billion euros are needed for “social climate protection” and the nine-euro ticket “forever”.