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GLASGOW – Defying high winds and constant rain, thousands poured into the streets of Glasgow on Saturday to stage loud and colorful protests, urging global leaders to take action tough enough to match the scale of a climate crisis that has already wreaked havoc in parts of the world.

Waving banners, drumming and singing hymns, a number of demonstrators, including members of trade unions and faith organizations, as well as left-wing activists, took over much of the Scottish city hosting the demonstration. COP26 climate summit. In the afternoon, a long, winding line of protesters ran through the city and took over an hour to cross a fixed point.

The protest demonstrated how the war to curb climate change has become an umbrella for a growing protest movement that seeks to oppress global leaders for a wide variety of reasons, including racial justice and income equality.

“We shouldn’t underestimate the importance of how the climate movement has entered the mainstream over the past two years because it’s really starting to change people’s consciousness,” said Feyzi Ismail, lecturer in global politics and activism at Goldsmiths, University of London. .

“I think that’s more important than what happened at the COP meeting because it puts the kind of pressure needed to force governments to take action, but it’s also trying to take positions that are far more radical than they could have been,” he added.

Many of the protesters made contact with their own lives.

“Flooding is happening and will continue to happen,” said Alexandra Bryden, 63, an upholsterer and curtain manufacturer from Auchterarder, north of Edinburgh, adding that her workshop was flooded and she was worried about her family’s future. Members living on the beach.

According to some organizers, more than 200 events were planned around the world, with more than half of that number in the UK.

In Paris, hundreds of demonstrators gathered outside City Hall, where activists displayed portraits of world leaders they accuse of doing little to stop global warming. The names of leaders, including President Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron, were read and then booed by the crowd. “One, two and three degrees, this is a crime against humanity,” protesters divinebefore a minute’s silence for the victims of climate change around the world.

But Saturday’s focus was Glasgow, where officials closed several dozen streets to manage his arrival, which organizers said would be tens of thousands of protesters.

“People come in this weather to tell us we’re fed up,” said Robert Dickie, 64, a retired accountant from Hamilton, Scotland, near Glasgow, wearing a skirt and playing a bagpipe.

“Some things need to change before we all go extinct – and that’s what will happen in the long run,” he said.

Saturday’s march was the culmination of the small protests that took place around the city throughout the week. Including a youth-led demonstration on Friday It was organized by the group Fridays for Future, an international movement that emerged from Greta Thunberg’s solo school strike in 2018. He addressed the crowd on Friday, calling COP26 a “failure”.

In the first week of the climate summit, new promises were made on tackling deforestation and moving away from coal. At least 105 countries signed an agreement reduce emissions of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, by 30 percent this decade. Major financial institutions said they will mobilize trillions of dollars to help shift the global economy towards cleaner energy.

Still, experts say, to avert the worst effects of climate change, temperature rise should be limited to 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, between pre-industrial times and the end of this century. And even if all countries meet their current commitments, this goal cannot be achieved.

Like many environmental groups, protesters in Glasgow were skeptical of promises, skeptical that such promises would be kept, and in any case argued that they had not gone far enough to solve an urgent global problem.

“There will be communities to be slaughtered on the Scottish coast. That’s the truth,” said Mrs. Bryden, the upholsterer. “I can’t look my granddaughter in the eye. I’m sorry for what she’ll have to endure in the future.”

Bel Burn, 59, a retired health worker from Cumbria in northern England, said he was protesting against intensive agriculture and described how he bought 20 acres of land where he planned to plant 4,200 trees.

“We blame China and we blame Brazil, but we don’t do enough and I don’t see a strategy,” he said, sheltering from the rain.

“They didn’t go far enough,” he added. “They’ve had so many agreements on this before, why should we believe it will be different this time?”

Stuart Graham, Glasgow union official and member of the COP26 Coalition that organized the protests, said he hoped the march would support campaigns for free public transport and a massive program to isolate and improve the city’s housing stock. “It is very important that we have a civil society with a strong voice to hold these leaders to account,” he said.

Organizers argue that surprising groups with diverse agendas are united by a shared commitment to what they call climate justice.

Katia Penha, one of the activists who is also part of the Quilombola community, a group of Blacks living in rural Brazil, said her presence in Glasgow this weekend was important to bring attention to the concerns in developing countries. often overlooked by global leaders. Its community has been impacted by mining and wants these challenges to be acknowledged with disproportionately affected Indigenous communities.

“We’re here to tell the world that without us – the people of Quilombola in Brazil – it’s not possible to have a discussion about climate change,” he said. Died in 2015 as a result of the explosion of a hydroelectric dam in Mariana, Brazil. Quilombola destroyed people and communities.

Elsewhere, vegan activists carried balloons of a cow and a chicken with the message, “Thank you for not eating us.” On one hillside, a group wrote “Amazonia Forever” in cloth strips over an image of a butterfly, drawing attention to the destruction of the rainforest.

So far, the violence that marked some of the protests in the first years of the summit, especially in Seattle in 1999, has been largely avoided.

Instead, youth groups and organizations that believed in nonviolent corruption such as Extinction Rebellion came to the fore.

Ismail said the problem with the protest movement is whether it can expand its influence by joining with unions and persuading workers to use the threat of strikes to set a coherent agenda. But he said he’s already making progress.

“The only thing that will change the situation is the protest movement,” said Ismail. “No pressure, no change.”

aurelien breed Contributed to reporting from Paris.