Fridays for Future protests draw 75,000 in Germany

Some 75,000 people filled the streets as part of Fridays for Future demonstrations across Germany, the organization said.

Children as well as adults showed up in dozens of cities including Berlin, Munich, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Cologne and Hanover.

"We were on the streets today with tens of thousands of people and showed that people do not want to remain passive in the face of the escalating climate crisis, while the federal government is unable to implement concepts for socially just climate policy," said Annika Rittmann of Fridays for Future Germany.

Similar actions were held around the world, including in New York City, Rio de Janeiro, New Delhi and Brussels.

Floods underscore climate emergency

The Fridays for Future movement was born out of Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg's weekly student protests in 2018.

This week's bumper turnout in Germany comes as the movement fights to stay visible and regain momentum.

But it also comes amid wild weather across the continent, from floods in Central Europe to fires in Portugal.

"With the bad floods that we have seen, you have to draw the connection that they are simply more frequent due to climate change," Sebastian Bock, a demonstrator in Berlin, told the AFP news agency.

Since Thunberg started her protest six years ago, the Earth has warmed more than 0.29 degrees Celsius (0.5 degrees Fahrenheit), according to European climate agency Copernicus and the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Last year was the hottest year on record, and 2024 is expected to break that record.

Germany jails elderly climate activists

Meanwhile, in the northeastern German state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, two elderly climate activists were sentenced to jail for sabotaging an oil pipeline.

The court said the activists — aged 69 and 74 — broke into two pumping stations in the state in 2022.

The activists' action stopped the flow of oil at one pumping station, while the other was not pumping oil at the time of the incident.

One of them was sentenced to three months in jail, while the other was sentenced to seven months, including another conviction in Bavaria.

The activists were not given suspended sentences because they told the Neubrandenburg District Court that they would carry out more crimes "to save the world's climate."

zc/sms (dpa, AFP, AP)

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