\n<\/p>\n
Tens of thousands of people, young and old, filled the streets of Midtown Manhattan under blazing sunshine on Sunday to demand that world leaders quickly pivot away from fossil fuels dangerously heating the Earth.<\/p>\n
Their ire was sharply directed at President Biden, who is expected to arrive in New York Sunday night for several fund-raisers this week and to speak before the United Nations General Assembly session that begins Tuesday.<\/p>\n
\u201cBiden, you should be scared of us,\u201d Emma Buretta, 17, a New York City high school student and an organizer with the Fridays for Future movement, shouted at a rally ahead of the march. \u201cIf you want our vote, if you don\u2019t want the blood of our generations to be on your hands, end fossil fuels.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Biden administration has shepherded through the United States\u2019 most ambitious climate law and is working to transition the country to wind, solar and other renewable energy. But it has also continued to approve permits for new oil and gas drilling.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
That has enraged many of Mr. Biden\u2019s traditional supporters, as well as politicians on the left flank of the Democratic Party, who want him to declare a climate emergency and block any new fossil fuel production. A few lawmakers from the party\u2019s progressive wing were scheduled to speak Sunday afternoon at a rally at the end of the march.<\/p>\n
The strong turnout in New York surprised organizers, and followed a weekend of similar demonstrations in Germany, England, Senegal, South Korea, India and elsewhere. They are the largest such protests since before the Covid-19 pandemic, and they come on the heels of the hottest summer on record, exacerbated by planetary warming, and amid record profits for oil and gas companies.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
In New York, some protesters came in wheelchairs; others pushed strollers. They traveled to the city from around the country and around the world. They were health care workers and antinuclear activists, monks and imams, labor leaders and actors, scientists and drummers. And students, so many students.<\/p>\n
There was puppetry and song and thousands of homemade signs and banners. \u201cI want a fossil-free president,\u201d read one placard. One protester brought a small hand-painted Earth in flames. Another carried an elaborate cardboard sculpture of a fish skeleton. Several Jewish men blew a shofar, the ram\u2019s horn used on Rosh Hashana. A group from Boston brought a banner that stretched across the width of a city block, with stripes representing the steady warming of the Earth\u2019s atmosphere since the beginning of the industrial age. There was a dance club on the roof of a converted school bus.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\u201cI\u2019m here today because we need to stop the extraction of Mother Earth and the natural resources for greed and for billionaires and corporations across the world,\u201d said Brenna Two Bears, 28, an Indigenous activist whose family in Arizona had felt the impact of wildfires exacerbated by drought and heat.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Mary Robinson, the former president of Ireland who is now an outspoken climate campaigner, blasted the estimated $7 trillion in subsidies that the International Monetary Fund says governments worldwide spent last year on oil and gas drilling. \u201cWe are subsidizing what is destroying us,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The protests indicate a shift in message and tone from climate advocates, who have grown increasingly frustrated at the continued expansion of fossil fuel projects alongside promises by oil and gas companies to use emerging and often costly technologies to capture carbon dioxide from the air and bury it underground.<\/p>\n
According to scientific models as well as projections by the International Energy Agency, nations must stop new oil, gas and coal projects if the world is to stay within relatively safe levels of atmospheric warming.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
The large, peaceful protests around the world this weekend were mostly led by young people.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\u201cRather than taking meaningful climate action, the government is supporting the fossil fuel industry to prioritize corporate interests and groups of power,\u201d said Borim Kim, who helped organize the event in Samcheok, South Korea, where protesters chanted \u201cLet\u2019s end fossil fuels\u201d as they marched along a road next to coal trucks and stood in front of the city\u2019s newest coal-fired power plant.<\/p>\n
While Sunday\u2019s march was billed as a nonviolent demonstration, climate protests are becoming more confrontational. Activists have thrown pies at glass-covered paintings, disrupted a U.S. Open tennis match<\/a> and glued themselves to oil company buildings.<\/p>\n Civil disobedience actions are planned for Monday in Lower Manhattan.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Activists are especially angry that this year\u2019s U.N. climate negotiations are set to take place in the United Arab Emirates, a leading oil-producing state, and will be overseen by Sultan al-Jaber, head of the Emirati state-owned oil giant, ADNOC.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n