Worldwide rallies demand action on climate change

Tens of thousands marched across Australia today on a third day of worldwide rallies as pressure mounts on global leaders to strike a pact on slashing greenhouse gases at crunch talks in still-shaken Paris.
Some 150 leaders including US President Barack Obama, China's Xi Jinping, India's Narendra Modi and Russia's Vladimir Putin will attend the start of the UN conference tomorrow, tasked with reaching the first truly universal climate pact.
The goal is to limit average global warming to two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), perhaps less, over pre-Industrial Revolution levels by curbing fossil fuel emissions blamed for climate change.

Rallies demanding curbs to carbon pollution have been snowballing since Friday with marches across Australia today kickstarting a final day of people-powered protest.
Similar events were planned for Seoul, Rio de Janeiro, New York and Mexico City, among others cities, with scientists warning of superstorms, drought, and rising sea levels that swamp vast areas of land if concrete action is not taken.
"There is no Planet B," said one placard in Sydney where tens of thousands of people converged, while another read: "Solidarity on a global scale".

A large event in Melbourne on Friday kick-started the global campaign, with rallies on Saturday from New Zealand, to the Philippines, Bangladesh, Japan, South Africa and the UK.

A march of some 5,000 people in Adelaide today focused on the global impacts climate change has on health, food security and development, particularly among the world's poorest.
"Those who did the least to cause the problem are feeling the impacts first and hardest, like our sisters and brothers in the Pacific," said Judee Adams, a community campaigner with Oxfam.
Many low-lying Pacific nations such as Kiribati, Tuvalu and the Marshall Islands fear they could disappear beneath the waves completely as sea levels rise.
The message to curb global warming and help poor countries deal with climate change was hammered home by religious leaders in Paris delivering petitions with almost 1.8 million signatures from people around the world.

This week, the UN's weather body said the average global temperature for the year 2015 is set to touch 1 C, halfway towards the Paris conference's attempted limit.
And analysts say voluntary carbon-curbing pledges submitted by nations to bolster the Paris pact, even if fully adhered to, put Earth on track for warming of 3 C.