Students in New York crossed the Brooklyn Bridge holding signs and expressing concern about government inaction on climate change.

The protest was one of many youth protests that erupted around the world on March 25 in response to the ongoing climate crisis. The movement called on leaders to take action and recognize the effects of global warming on future generations.

The rally on the Brooklyn Bridge was organized by Fridays for Futurea youth-led organization that has inspired millions to protest against local governments and town halls to raise awareness of the climate crisis.

The initiative began in 2018 after Greta Thunberg led a school strike in the weeks before the Swedish elections, calling on the government to adopt climate policies in line with the goals of the Paris Agreement.

Students stood outside Sweden’s parliament every day for three weeks to protest, eventually creating the hashtag “#FridaysForFuture” and in turn sparking a global movement.

There was more than 700 strikes around the world that took place on March 25 in an effort to bolster a proposal that would distribute climate reparations to groups most at risk from the effects of climate change. The students gathered at Borough Hall around 1 p.m. and began marching to the Brooklyn Bridge at 1:45 p.m.

Protesters in New York demanded an end to construction of the North Brooklyn Pipeline.

the pipelinealso known as the Metropolitan Natural Gas Reliability Project, travels seven miles through East Williamsburg, Bushwick, Bedford-Stuyvesant and Brownsville, neighborhoods that are home to mostly black and Hispanic residents.

Activists opposed the project from the start, arguing that it perpetuates the city’s history of environmental racism. Fossil fuel infrastructure would inevitably lead to increased carbon emissions, further inducing the effects of climate change by contaminating the air.

Asthma rates in black and brown communities have skyrocketed over the years due to the implementation of environmental companies such as the North Brooklyn Pipeline, according to Bushwick Daily.

The Sane Energy project, a grassroots coalition advocating for community-controlled renewable energy, argues that the pipeline would drive up gas prices and have a dangerous impact on residents of the neighborhoods it passes through.

Various cities around the world have expressed their own local concerns, as well as their frustration with the lack of global coordination and action to address climate change.

Activists in Jakarta, the Indonesian capital who, according to some estimates, will be overwhelmed by 2050 due to sea level rise, wearing red dresses and holding signs who said “system change, not climate change.”

Young protesters in Feni, Bangladesh, was in waist deep in water, with a boy holding a sign that read: “Like the sea we rise”.

“Climate reparations are the compensation that the North has to pay to the South for the destruction it has caused by huge carbon emissions,” said Farzana Faruk Jhumu, a Bangladeshi climate activist.

In New York, local lawmakers have yet to respond to the youth-led protest calling for more climate action.

“Our Brooklyn neighborhoods have always been dumping grounds,” mentioned Pati Rodriguez, community organizer of Mi Casa Resiste, a group resisting gentrification and displacement based in Bushwick. Despite neglect at the local government level, Rodriguez noted that communities like Bushwick “are our neighborhoods that we have run.”

Construction of the seven-mile pipeline is currently on hold due to outcry over protests, as well as the project having its own internal difficulties. Construction, however, can resume at any time, which is why activists are now collectivizing.

Although the New York chapter of Fridays For Future does not have a Events to come listed on their website, the first youth-led protest supported by the organization in years is likely the start of bigger plans.