Seven-year-old Tymofiy skipped school on Friday, Sept. 20 to join thousands in Kyiv and millions in over 150 countries around the world protesting their governments’ inaction on the climate crisis in a demonstration known as the global climate strike.
“It’s important for me because I want me and all of us to be able to live on this planet, not floating on some other one in space. And it’s important for me to be able to lie in the sunlight and swim,” Tymofiy told the Kyiv Post.
Over 2,000 people — young and old alike — attended the strike in Kyiv, including protesters from 20 other Ukrainian cities, according to its coordinators. Tymofiy traveled over 300 kilometers from the western Ukrainian city of Rivne with his after-school ecology club.
“Stop. It’s time to act,” his poster said.
Global action
Tymofiy and other protesters are following the example of Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg and her Fridays for Future movement. A little over a year ago, Thunberg began skipping school on Fridays to hold solo protests outside the Swedish parliament calling for stronger climate action.
Since then, she has addressed European Union leaders and crossed the Atlantic on a boat to testify before the U.S. Congress. On Sept. 23, she will speak at the UN Climate Action Summit in New York, where countries will discuss actions to cut greenhouse gas emissions in line with the Paris Climate Agreement.
The Agreement was signed by Ukraine and almost all nations in 2016. The signatories pledged to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases in an effort to avert the worst effects of climate change, like rising sea levels, powerful storms, and droughts that lead to food shortages.
But concrete actions on curbing greenhouse gas emissions have been scarce.
That’s why, three days ahead of the summit, protesters around the world took to the streets to demand action from the UN member states and their respective governments.
Ukrainian march
Ukrainian demonstrators marched from Mykhailivska Square to the presidential office in Kyiv and voiced a list of six demands to President Volodymyr Zelensky and his new government.
First on the list was a demand for a 100-percent transition to renewable energy by 2050, while cutting carbon emissions, abandoning fossil fuels and increasing energy efficiency. Activists also called on the government to ban single-use plastics and develop city infrastructure for electric transport and bicycles. Another demand is to stop subsidizing factory farming, one of the primary sources of greenhouse gas emissions.
Marching by the Cabinet of Ministers building, the protesters passed their demands to the newly appointed Minister of Energy and Environmental Protection, Oleksiy Orzhel. Orzhel, who was also elected to parliament with Zelensky’s Servant of the People party, said he supports the march.
“We already have two bills on climate protection supported by committees in the Verkhovna Rada. One bill submitted by the Servant of the People faction is on banning (single-use) plastic and plastic bags. We are already starting to take real steps to protect the environment,” Orzhel told the activists.
The Ministry of Energy and Environmental Protection is a new office that combines the former Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources with the Ministry of Energy and the Coal Industry.
Ulana Suprun, the former health minister who participated in the march, says she is concerned that such diametrically opposed offices have been joined. Orzhel, on the other hand, suggests that the new ministry will be more effective because conflicts between the two offices have now been removed.
“My suggestion for the new ministry is to talk to (the oligarch Rinat) Akhmetov and tell him to clean up his factories. Fifty percent of the worst producers of air pollution (in Ukraine) will then be cleaned up,” Suprun told the Kyiv Post.
Unlike Orzhel, President Zelensky did not meet the protesters personally. An official at the presidential office, Serhiy Melnyk, came out to receive their demands.
“We loudly declared what we demand as concerned citizens. Now we expect an answer — for experts to join with politicians to resolve the climate crisis with ambitious climate policy,” said Inna Datsiuk, coordinator of the march and a field organizer with 350.org, an international movement advocating for a transition to renewable energy and an end to using fossil fuels.
“We have been heard!” Datsiuk called out through a megaphone to the cheering crowd of protesters.
