Vancouver climate protest planned Friday

A climate protest is planned for downtown Vancouver Friday afternoon.

The Sustainabiliteens group is set to march from Coal Harbour to the Vancouver Art Gallery starting at 2 p.m. The rally is expected to create some traffic delays for anyone in the downtown area.

The group is demanding “bold policy action in line with science” from leaders to address the ongoing environmental crisis.

Spokesperson Amber Leung says the fight against climate change is as important as ever.

“We’ve been doing this for years and we haven’t gotten the change that we need. The science clearly shows that we have to stop fossil fuel expansion immediately, yet corporations and the government continue to push through pipelines like the Trans Mountain expansion. And youth especially feel this because this is our future that’s becoming more and more endangered every day that we don’t see scientific action,” Leung told CityNews.

FILE – A Sustainabiliteens climate protest sign. (Courtesy Sustainabiliteens)

“And the people who are most marginalized also feel the impacts of climate change. Like in Pakistan, where they had floods that displaced millions of people and Pakistan is one of the countries that contributes the least to emissions. This is not just a climate change issue, it’s also an inequality issue and each day we wait, the gap becomes bigger and affects more people and becomes more deadly.”

While the protest will begin with a march to demand change, Leung says it will end with a sort of block party at the art gallery, where the focus will be on building community and getting people involved in the climate movement.

“We hope that we can build some hope in the climate movement as obviously the news is really depressing everyday with disasters abroad and here in our own province in B.C. But there are truly so many good activists and organizations that are working really hard to solve this issue and we want to showcase that to the public,” said Leung.

The Sustainabiliteens have held several rallies and protests in the past to demand action from people in power.

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