hundreds of young people demonstrate against advertising and march for the climate
Several demonstrations had been organized since Friday to demand more action on the issue of climate change.
A few hundred young people pounded the pavement on Sunday in Paris to demand a brake on advertisements, after a weekend of climate protests which mobilized little in France compared to the major marches of 2019, before the covid.
Slogan of the Parisian march between the Pantheon and the Ministry of the Economy, at the call of Youth for Climate: “demand a change in society and demand from our politicians a drastic reduction in advertising in Île-de- France”.
“Advertising leads to overconsumption”
Marches gathered a few hundred people on Friday in Paris and elsewhere at the call of another organization (Fridays for Future), while other activists chose more offensive modes of action: the blocking of premises of TotalEnergies in Lyon by young people from Youth for Climate; the blockades by Attac of the quay of the billionaires of Antibes on Saturday and of the business terminal of Le Bourget airport on Friday, with militants from Extinction Rebellion for the latter.
“Advertising generates overconsumption and therefore over-exploitation of natural resources”, explained on the spot Abel Jeudon, 18, activist of Youth for Climate, one of the organizations born in the wake of the successful school strike in 2018 by the young Swedish Greta Thunberg: “time is running out, we have to act quickly, radically, and completely change direction because we are going straight into the wall”.
“Growth is not synonymous with happiness”, said signs.
“The IPCC report has shown it well: the most precarious people drink the most from climate change. And so we, students, will be the first concerned”, declared Imane Ouelhadj, the president of the student union UNEF, in the procession.
For Camille, 24, unemployed, NUPES inserter, “on questions of ecology, we tend to send us a few messages that small daily gestures will change things. We have the opposite message that we want to make heard: in fact, it is a system that we have to fight together”.