The young marched in their thousands yesterday and in a myriad of languages raised their united voice to demand climate justice.
They came from the decimated rain forests of Brazil, the scorched lands of Tanzania and the dustbowl fields of the Middle East to stand shoulder to shoulder with the youth of Scotland and the striking workers of Glasgow.
This is a generation dismissed by cynics as snowflakes when in reality they are youngsters with fires in their bellies, ignited by their indignation that the earth is in flames.
This collective force for the future began their protest in Kelvingrove Park, dotted as it is with statues of slave traders and war mongers of our nation’s past.
They made their way to George Square, via Nelson Mandela Place, a reminder of Scotland’s affiliation to political action and resistance.
Throughout history it is the young who have enforced change, from the children shot in the protests of Soweto in South African apartheid to the young climate activists now being murdered in Brazil for fighting the deforestation of the Amazon.
And in Glasgow yesterday it was again the young, the little children on the shoulders of their parents and the teenagers who carried placards, who demanded we stop the runaway theft of their future.
They say that people make Glasgow and yesterday those people had come from every corner of the globe.
Ana Patte, 29, who is from an indigenous peoples in the Brazilian Amazon, walked with a delegation of 40 young women, feet from a teenage boy waving a sign saying:”we are burning the wrong Amazon.”
For the first time in history significant parts of the world’s largest tropical forests, the lungs of our planet, have started to emit more carbon than they absorb and indigenous tribes are being bulldozed out of extinction by deforestation and land grabs.
Ana said: “The indigenous people have lost their lives and livelihoods through climate change. We are at the forefront of the protection of the environment.
“The leaders of COP26 are doing nothing while our lives are destroyed. We need to be at the table, at the centre of finding solutions not being discarded like we are nothing.”
Ali Mwamzola, 24, from Tanzania told how his little sister misses school because she has to walk so far to a well to fetch water in the drought hit area of their home.
Safa Almomani, 32, from Jordan, spoke of how the farmers in her country are being displaced from their lands by erratic rainfall patterns, reduced freshwater resources and increased temperatures.
And Iona, 7, was marching with her mum Victoria Bianchi, 32, from Glasgow and carrying her own homemade placard which pleaded: “Don’t put rubbish in the sea or the ground.”
Iona said she had been allowed off school to march to “protect the planet and my future”.
And Caitlin Ashcroft, 15, from Glasgow said she too had missed school carrying a sign which read: “Skipping history to ensure history doesn’t end here.”
When asked why he was at the march, Rory Chnagleng, 23 from Peebles simply said: ”How could I not come? I was born in 1998 and my whole life is contained in the part of every graph on climate change, marked red. I am here because I fear for all our futures.”
Waving above the sea of activists were flags from Palestine, from Italy, from Columbia, from the youth organisation Fridays For Future and unions, GMB Scotland and Unison.
Striking bin men and city council workers came in force to answer the call from Greta Thunberg to join the action because she said, “climate justice also means social justice”.
Addressing the crowds at George Square the 18-year-old climate change activist said the conference in Glasgow is the ‘most excluding COP ever.’
“This is no longer a climate conference, this is now a global north greenwash festival, a two week celebration of business as usual and blah, blah, blah.”
”Those are not the leaders, we are.”
And yesterday it felt that the youth are the only leaders we can have any faith in, if we are to win the fight of our lives against climate change.
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