But they said they aimed to continue face-to-face protests to urge candidates and donors to support tough action against greenhouse gas emissions.

“This is one of the most effective things we can do,” said Matthew Miles Goodrich, 26, a fund-raiser for the Sunrise Movement. “My generation is uniquely damaged by the policies that aren’t meeting the challenge of the climate crisis. We really want the candidates who aren’t measuring up to look us in the eye, at the faces of the people they’re condemning in some ways to climate disaster.”

The protest was unusual in the sedate area along Central Park, near the landmark Dakota building, where many of the city’s wealthy liberals, and some conservatives, live in spacious apartments. Bemused passers-by — dog walkers, people with baby strollers, teenagers coming home in private-school sports uniforms — stared at the protest. Some stopped to give their support.

“This is not a little mistake,” said Steven Jackman, 62, a retired computer network technician from Massapequa, N.Y. “Climate change is right now. Fracking is dangerous for the water in New York — people love New York water, it’s the purest — and it’s dangerous all over the country.”

But, he added, it was not surprising that candidates would take money from the fossil fuel industry.

“You can’t expect them not to meet with these people — he needs their money,” Mr. Jackman said.

Mr. Biden, for his part, has released a sweeping plan to combat climate change that would end subsidies for fossil fuels and urges “action against fossil fuel companies and other polluters who put profit over people and knowingly harm our environment.”