THE HAGUE - Thousands of Dutch children
skipped school to join a global climate strike on Friday,
blocking traffic and asking their leaders "how dare you?" in a
reference to Swedish teenage activist Greta Thunberg's speech at
the United Nations.
Turnout at the march in The Hague exceeded expectations with
organisers estimating the crowd at about 35,000. Police were
forced to reroute the march to a location with more space.
Thunberg, 16, gave an impassioned address at the United
Nations in New York this week, after millions of people
worldwide joined a climate strike protest last Friday in the
run-up to a U.N. climate summit.
"This strike is going to have a lot of effect when people
keep showing up, not just today but also in the future and we
see different kinds of people from all walks of life," said
protester Reinder Rustema.
Banging drums and holding pictures of Thunberg, protesters
walked through the city centre with placards reading: "For the
Greta good", "Don't be a fossil fool," and "You will die of old
age, we will die of climate change."
"I understand their concerns, I believe they are being
heard," Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte told journalists at a
weekly press briefing within earshot of the protests. "We have
presented very ambitious plans to deal with these problems. But
we have to do it in a smart way, which also creates jobs."
Thunberg's brief address electrified the start of the summit
aimed at mobilising government and business to break
international paralysis over carbon emissions, which hit record
highs last year despite decades of warnings from scientists.
"This is all wrong. I shouldn't be up here. I should be back
in school on the other side of the ocean yet you all come to us
young people for hope. How dare you?" she said, her voice
quavering with emotion.
The Netherlands, with 17 million inhabitants, generated
less than 7 percent of all energy from sustainable sources in
2017, compared to 15 percent in Germany and over half of all
energy in Sweden.
The government has pledged to halve CO2 emissions from 1990
levels by 2030, but by 2017 had only achieved a 13 percent cut.
Thunberg was taking part in a protest in Canada on Friday
where U.N. aviation leaders were gathering in Montreal to
discuss plane emissions targets.