The Climate March for Survival was organised by the youth initiative Fridays for Future Croatia and Extinction Rebellion Zagreb, which are part of the global movement to protect life on Earth. The march was organised on the last day of the COP26 UN climate conference in Glasgow.
Demonstrators carried placards saying “Time is running out”, “Systemic change, not climate change”, “Shorten the working week”, “Wellbeing, not profit”, “Healthy environment, not profit” and “If the planet was a bank, you would have saved it already.”
“The purpose of this campaign is to send a message to the Croatian government to start acting on the climate emergency. We will present three demands and the first one is the urgent closure of Plomin, the only active coal-fired thermal power plant in Croatia which has absolutely no grounds to continue operating,” Leonarda Šmigmator of Fridays for Future Croatia told the press.
“It is interesting that Prime Minister Andrej Plenković announced at the COP26 conference in Glasgow that Plomin would be closed down as late as 2033, while at the same time 40 countries pledged to stop using coal as an energy source. This means that Croatia is lagging behind again,” she said, adding that Plomin workers should be allowed to retrain for work in other industries.
Šmigmator pointed out that the march participants demand that the climate change issue should be included in primary and secondary school curricula and that the Ministry of Economy and Sustainable Development should start communicating with scientists and involving them in its decisions.
Commenting on COP26, she said that the conference has disappointed everyone and that great expectations have not been fulfilled.
Among the marchers were Workers Front MP Katarina Peović with her daughter, trade union leader Krešimir Sever with his son, New Left member of the Zagreb City Council Rada Borić, ombudsman Tena Šimonović Einwalter, presidential adviser on energy and climate Julije Domac, and Nikola Briškov from the Scientists for Climate initiative and ambassador and EU Climate Pact ambassador.
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