Caroline Lucas among speakers and Naomi Klein records video message for event, which is part of a series in cities around the world

Thousands of climate change protesters gathered in central London on Saturday to urge strong action at the Paris climate conference in December.



Protesters set off from Lincoln’s Inn Fields and headed for Westminster to hear from speakers including the Green party MP Caroline Lucas and the head of Greenpeace UK John Sauven.

The Campaign Against Climate Change, who organised the march, said “well over 20,000” people attended. The number of attendees was buoyed by the bright sunshine of early spring. Last September 40,000 people took to London’s streets as part of the biggest demonstration on climate change action in history.

Sauven said the protest on Saturday was the first step in a year of climate action. “This is much smaller in terms of its aims and objectives [than the global day of action in 2014]. But I think it’s also just the beginning. By the time we get to Paris then we have to have far bigger numbers than we had last year in September.”

Lucas said climate change was visible and demanded action. “It’s time to stand up against those determined to burn the last drops of oil and gas and be confident in our power to build a better future,” she said. “In coming together we help build the climate movement and inspire others to join us.”

She said there had been a failure of political leadership: “It’s a refusal on the part of most politicians to stand up to fossil fuel lobbyists, listen to the scientists, and act in the public interest.”



The author Naomi Klein urged grassroots activists to redouble their efforts during the months before December’s climate change conference in Paris. In a video message for the rally, she said it was not only political leaders who held the power to act on climate change.

Don't look away now, the climate crisis needs you | Naomi Klein Read more

“Here we are, with just nine months ahead of those critical climate talks in Paris. It’s not nine months to pressure our leaders to act. We have nine months to act ourselves. Nine months to become the leaders we need. To lead from below, from the streets, from the neighbourhoods, from the smallest towns to the biggest cities,” the author said.

The designer Vivienne Westwood, who also made a video message, said: “You’re not alone, people know what’s going on. We must keep up the fight against climate change, the clock is ticking.”

Leila Wilmers, 30, who attended the rally, said both government and big business needed to do more than “just telling people to switch their lightbulbs off and so on”.

Andrew Musser, 30, a physicist at Cambridge University, said: “The government policy is quite bizarre. They say they’re concerned about the environment but then they propose wide-scale fracking. I think they need to move to renewable energy, particularly hydropower and solar power.”

The Guardian has launched a campaign to examine the consequences of climate change. Alan Rusbridger, the editor-in-chief, wrote: “The coming debate is about two things: what governments can do to attempt to regulate, or otherwise stave off, the now predictably terrifying consequences of global warming beyond 2C by the end of the century. And how we can prevent the states and corporations which own the planet’s remaining reserves of coal, gas and oil from ever being allowed to dig most of it up. We need to keep them in the ground.”



Metropolitan police officers were stationed around the march following a back down on their previous refusal to police peaceful protests last month.









