Four arrested at Vancouver climate march

Vancouver police arrested four people at a march for action against climate change on Saturday.

Protesters with Extinction Rebellion had intended to occupy both the Cambie Bridge and Georgia Street viaducts, but were blocked by police.

Demonstrators instead occupied the intersection of Cambie and Georgia.

Police said most of the estimated 40 demonstrators vacated the intersection when ordered to disperse, but two men, a woman and a 15-year-old boy who refused to leave were arrested for mischief.

Saturday’s demonstration was part of the launch of a national campaign to highlight environmental issues, with concurrent protests in several other Canadian cities.

3:32 UN climate change report warns climate crisis is worsening

The group says the campaign will escalate with more protests and non-violent civil disobedience through October.

The protest came on the heels of the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which warned climate change was dangerously close to spiraling irreversibly out of control.

The report found that human-generated greenhouse gases had already reached high enough levels in the atmosphere to ensure at least decades of climate disruption.

Unless immediate, rapid and large-scale action is taken to reduce emissions, the report says, the average global temperature is likely to reach or cross the 1.5-degree Celsius warming threshold within 20 years.