BERLIN – Students from more than a dozen European countries joined a demonstration Friday urging governments to take bolder action against climate change.
Organizers anticipated the protest in the western German city of Aachen would draw 20,000 participants. It comes a day after European Union leaders failed to agree a plan to make the bloc’s economy carbon neutral by 2050.
Local reports billed the demonstration as “Fridays for the Future,” a movement started by Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg.
Several large European countries – including Britain, France and Germany – have backed the target, but coal-reliant countries in the east, such as Poland, are opposed.
Friday’s protest takes place near the site of one of Germany’s biggest lignite coal mines.
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The protesters chanted “We are unstoppable, another world is possible” as they walked through the pit.
The mine has become a focus of environmental protests in recent years because its operator, utility company RWE, threatened to chop down a nearby forest.