Throughout the world Friday, young people banded together to demand that world leaders headed to a United Nations summit in New York step up their efforts to combat climate change.

The demonstrations , held from Canberra to Kabul to Paris to New York, were inspired in part by the activism of Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg , who over the past year has staged weekly demonstrations urging governments to take action to save the environment.

The world has warmed about 1 degree Celsius (1.8 Fahrenheit) since before the Industrial Revolution, and scientists have attributed more than 90 percent of the increase to emissions of heat-trapping gases from fuel-burning and other human activity.

Scientists have warned that global warming will subject Earth to rising seas and more heat waves, droughts, powerful storms, flooding and other problems, and that some have already started manifesting themselves.

"Basically our earth is dying and if we don't do something about it, we die," said A.J. Conermann, a 15-year old sophomore who attended a protest in Washington, D.C. "I want to grow up. I want to have a future."