As temperatures soar, activists call for urgent action to save the planet

NEW YORK/BANGKOK — Climate change campaigners gathered in New York's Times Square on Earth Day to urge action on global warming and cuts in the use of plastics as volunteers worldwide planted trees and cleared trash to mark the 54th annual celebration of the environment.

Earth Day this year, on Saturday, followed weeks of extreme weather, with temperatures soaring to record highs in Thailand and with a punishing heatwave in India, where at least 13 people died of heatstroke at a recent ceremony.

On Saturday, Thai authorities warned residents across large swathes of the country, including the capital Bangkok, to avoid going outdoors due to extreme heat.

In the Bang Na district of Bangkok, the temperature reached 42 C, while the heat index — which measures what the temperature feels like due to humidity — hit a record 54 C, the meteorological department said.

Average global temperatures could hit all-time highs this year or next, climate scientists have warned.

"Climate impacts are here," Areeba Hamid, co-executive director of Greenpeace UK, said on Friday as climate change activists walked down the street outside parliament in London, some dressed in green costumes and green paint.

Hamid said that when she now visits her hometown of Delhi, it feels like "putting your head in the oven "and that a heatwave in London last year was like "a dystopian film".

"We can't afford that anymore."

In India, at least two states, Tripura and West Bengal, ordered schools to shut last week, as temperatures rose more than 5 C above normal, state governments said.

Scientists have linked the early onset of an intense summer to climate change, and say more than a billion people in India and neighboring Pakistan are in some way vulnerable to the extreme heat.

Protesters gather

In London, activists led by the environmental group Extinction Rebellion gathered to begin a four-day action, billed The Big One, to coincide with Earth Day.

The group said thousands of people protested outside government departments in London on Friday "to highlight the environmental and social failures across them all".

About 30,000 people signed up for family-friendly rallies and marches, marking a change in strategy for a group known for its disruptive tactics, including blocking roads, throwing paint and smashing windows.

Globally, there was a flurry of activity in the run-up to Earth Day, with events being planned in Rome and Boston and major cleanup campaigns at Dal Lake in India's Srinagar and Florida's hurricane-hit Cape Coral.

New York banned cars on streets in at least 31 locations for five hours on Saturday and held concerts in Times Square. In Washington, the Climate Justice Alliance marched, calling for an end of the fossil fuel era, accompanied by a brass jazz band.

Governments have fallen far short of pledges in the 2015 Paris Agreement to limit heating of the climate by shifting off fossil fuels, amid crises including COVID-19, the Russia-Ukraine conflict, food shortages and strained ties between the US and China, the top two greenhouse gas emitters.

A report by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says the planet is on track to warm beyond 1.5 C above preindustrial times — a key threshold for even more damaging impacts — between 2030 and 2035.

"There is a rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a livable and sustainable future for all," the IPCC has said. "The choices and actions implemented in this decade will have impacts now and for thousands of years."

Agencies via Xinhua