After years of equivocation on climate issues by politicians and leaders around the world, young people have had enough.
That’s the message from the young leaders of Friday’s global climate protests, which drew hundreds of thousands of people to climate “strikes” around the world in anticipation of a U.N. summit in New York.
“We see the world as it is, we see it really clearly,” says activist Jeremy Ornstein, 18. “Seeing it as it is and as it could be — that’s what we call moral clarity.”
In Boston, Ornstein and thousands of other young activists gathered at City Hall Plaza, before making their way to the Massachusetts Statehouse building. Ornstien gave an address to a cheering crowd, as did older figures, like Obama Administration EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy.
Samuel Corum—Getty ImagesA’niya Taylor, 16, from Baltimore, MD, leads other youth down Pennsylvania Avenue to the U.S. Capitol Building as part of the Global Climate Strike protests on September 20, 2019 in Washington, DC..