Youths around the world plan to skip school on Friday to demand action on climate change in over 1,600 cities and towns in no fewer than 100 countries, organisers said on Thursday.
Swedish teen environmental campaigner, Greta Thunberg, who inspired the worldwide protests, has been nominated for Nobel Peace Prize by three Norwegian opposition politicians.
Thunberg has staged a weekly protest outside parliament in Stockholm since August, 2018, that has spread and inspired pupil demonstrations calling for climate action around the world under the #FridaysForFuture slogan.
“We have nominated Greta because the climate threat is perhaps the main factor for war and conflict.
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“The massive movement that Greta has launched is a very important contribution to peace,’’ Freddy Ovstegard of the Socialist Left Party, told Oslo daily, VG.
Thunberg said on Twitter that she was “honoured and very grateful’’.
She also tweeted: “1,659 places in 105 countries. Tomorrow we school strike for our future. And, we will continue to do so for as long as it takes.
“Adults are more than welcome to join us. Unite behind the science’’.
Friday’s first protests were set for outside town halls and national parliaments in countries spanning from Australia to Vanuatu in the South Pacific.
As at Thursday, 209 protests were planned in France, 195 in Germany, 178 in Italy, 158 in the U.S., 123 in Sweden, and 107 in Britain.
Thunberg, 16, has addressed world leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, as well as the UN climate conference held last year in Katowice, Poland.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee said in February that it had registered 304 nominations for this year’s peace prize. (NAN)
