The Public Environmental Center for Sustainable Development (PECSD) supports the protest of millions of young people around the world against governments’ inaction on climate change. The Bulgarian government, for its part, has no plans for a transition from coal to renewable energy. Unlike other European countries, there is not even a fixed end date in Bulgaria for stopping the use of fossil fuels.
The Climate Strike on September 20 includes over 1,000 cities from 115 countries. In Bulgaria, protests were announced in four cities – Sofia (6 pm in front of the National Palace of Culture), Varna (6.30 pm, against the Festival Complex), Pleven (6 pm, in front of the municipality building) and Samokov (5 pm, Zahari Zograf Square “).
The large-scale action takes place three days before the UN summit in New York to tackle the climate crisis. Secretary-General Guterish urged all world leaders to attend a keynote meeting on September 23th about specific national plans. Recent studies show that if decisive action is taken now, the increase in temperatures may be limited.
Earlier in the year, European Union leaders failed to reach a firm agreement on a carbon-neutral economy by 2050.
The climate strike is similar to the “Fives for the Future” protest, started by Swedish schoolgirl Greta Thunberg. Thunberg did not go to school every Friday to protest outside the government building that nothing was being done to combat climate change.