Tens of thousands pack Paris climate demo

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PARIS, March 15, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – Tens of thousands of young people took part in the Paris edition of Friday’s global student climate demonstration, according to the police and the rally’s organisers.

The police estimated that around 29,000 people took part the peaceful demonstration — one of the biggest around the world on Friday — but Youth for Climate, the global movement behind the rallies, put the figure at 40,000.

The participants were mostly schoolchildren and college students, many of whom came with their parents and waved banners warning there is “No Planet B” — a slogan coined by President Emmanuel Macron last year — or “No nature, no future”.

The clamorous march traversed much of Paris’s Left Bank, ending at Les Invalides esplanade, where crowds were continuing to gather an hour after the demonstration ended, according to an AFP journalist on the scene.

Climate strikes were scheduled to take place in some 2,052 places in 123 countries on Friday, Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old Swedish founder of Youth for Climate wrote on Twitter.

Additional climate demonstrations are planned around France on Saturday.