Greta Thunberg Leads Thousands of Protesters to Demand for Action and No More 'Blah Blah Blah'
Thousands gathered in Glasgow for the protest. Source: Carly McCann
Swedish climate change activist, Greta Thunberg, led an estimate of 30,000+ climate change activists through Kelvingrove Park to George Square at 11am in Glasgow on 5 November. The event was organised by Fridays for Future Scotland.
The heart of the march was to urge governments and UN climate conferences to step up their game amid the COP26 summit, which is currently taking place in Glasgow.
Thunberg, along with world leaders including Joe Biden, Boris Johnson, and Angela Merkel, are all attendees of COP26. However, the Swedish activist has her own definition of leadership and took to the streets of Glasgow to tell her truth about how COP26 really is: “This is no longer a climate conference, this is a Global North greenwash festival”.
Being invited to COP26 did not stop Thunberg from labelling the UN climate summit as a “failure” after the march.
She described what she is doing as “Real leadership” when she attended Festival Park in Govan, alongside hundreds of other activists.
After the march, Thunberg slammed the government for “Actively creating loopholes to benefit themselves, and to continue profiting from this destructive system”.
The Swedish activist had no kind words to say when it came to COP26. However, Stuart Fraser, a Strathclyde researcher and climate change activist who attended the march, had a different tone when he stated: “This is our fight, we all belong to the world and we all have a role to play, and we must all work together”.
Activists such as Vanessa Nakate, and speakers from Kenya, England, and Brazil, all spoke about how climate change is negatively impacting their countries and also argued that COP26 is not doing anything beneficial for them, and according to Thunberg, only acts as a “PR event”.
Thunberg also stated: “The Global North countries are still refusing to take any drastic climate action”.
Activists voiced their own personal stories on how their governments fail to take climate change seriously and how they are neglected as citizens and human beings, who in turn have been forced to flee their countries due to drought and an unpredictable climate.
Thunberg further describes the UN climate change summit as a “Two week long celebration of business as usual and blah, blah, blah”.
The protest travelled from the West End to the City Centre. Source: Carly McCann
Eilidh Friel, 19, and a student activist attending the march said: “We all have a part to play, if they don’t listen to us now, they never will”. Friel went onto further chant “One solution, climate revolution” and “We hate Boris, let’s save the forest” alongside thousands of other activists at the march.
She also says: “The division between world leaders and climate activists is as heated as it has ever been, with either side failing to listen to each other. It does not matter if you are on the streets today or in a conference room. We all have the same goal”.