BRUSSELS (Dispatches) — Tens of thousands of people young and old marched through Brussels on Sunday to push world leaders to take bolder action to fight climate change at the UN climate summit in Glasgow starting this month.
Police said initial estimates suggested at least 25,000 marchers walked a three-kilometer route from the city’s North rail station to the Cinquantenaire Park. Organizers said the number of participants was 70,000.
Some 80 organizations took part in the protest, aiming for the biggest such event in the European Union’s capital since the start of the coronavirus crisis, which stopped the climate movement’s weekly marches in its tracks.
Cyclists, families with children, and white-haired demonstrators filled city streets, chanting slogans demanding climate justice and waving banners in English, French and Dutch. One carried a stuffed polar bear on her head.
“It is time for systemic change with radical action. It’s about the survival of humanity,” climate activist Anuna De Wever told VRT television.
“The climate is a socioeconomic story. We now have to stand up for the climate, the bill should not be paid by my generation,” said Conor Rousseau, the chief of Flanders social democrat party Vooruit.
Scientists say there’s little doubt that fuel emissions are contributing to extreme weather events like the droughts, fires, floods that have hit regions around the world this summer.

Demonstrator Lucien Dewanaga asked, “What do we do when we destroy the planet? We have nothing else. Human beings have to live in this world. And there is only one world.”
Environmentalists worry that the 26th Climate Change Conference of the Parties, known as the COP26, in Glasgow starting Oct. 31 will produce policies that don’t do enough to slash carbon emissions and slow the warming of the planet.
That meeting will see governments try to thrash out further commitments to limit the warming of the Earth to a maximum of 1.5 degrees Celsius as laid out in the 2015 Paris climate accord.
The crowd included a mix of people with and without masks. With one of the world’s highest vaccination rates, Belgium is starting to ease virus restrictions and allow such gatherings again.
The protest took on an added significance after devastating floods in July killed dozens in Belgium.
“Politicians die of old age, Rosa died of climate change,” said one banner referring to a 15-year-old who was swept away by a river in July.