Climate Change Protest Draws Thousands of Australian Students.

MELBOURNE, Australia — As wildfires raged across the country, a heat wave again threatened the Great Barrier Reef and a mining giant announced it would push ahead with a huge coal project, thousands of students across Australia quit school for the day on Friday to protest government inaction on climate change.

Milou Albrecht, 14, center, speaking to students attending
 a rally for climate change action at the Old Treasury
Building in Melbourne, Australia, on Friday.

The students — ranging in age from 5 to 18 — came from more than 200 schools to demand that the federal government block construction of the Adani Carmichael coal mine, block any new coal or gas projects and require 100 percent renewable energy use by 2030.

“I am here because I am terrified,” Harriet O’Shea Carre, 14, told a crowd of thousands of student marchers outside the Old Treasury Building in Melbourne. Protesters spilled out onto the road with signs saying “civil disobedience requires no permission slip” and “don’t be a fossil fool.”

Read The New York Times story by Livia Albeck-Ripka - “Climate Change Protest Draws Thousands of Australian Students.”