Young environmental activists hold banners as they demonstrate, calling for action on climate change during the "Fridays for Future" school strike, in Istanbul, Turkey, May 24, 2019.

Thousands of school students in Australia and New Zealand took to the streets Friday, initiating an international day of protests against the lack of action against climate change.

Organisers expect that more than a million young people in at least 120 counties will participate in protests.

Demonstrators are demanding that politicians and business leaders take swift measures to slow global warming due to greenhouse gas emissions, which are damaging planet Earth.

Youths hold a banner as they demonstrate calling for action on climate change during the "Fridays for Future" school strike, on Heldenplatz in Vienna, Austria, May 24, 2019.

The school protesters in Frankfurt, Germany, marched on the headquarters of the European Central Bank (ECB) to demand it stop financing the fossil fuel industry.

According to environmental scientists, greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels have caused droughts and heatwaves, the melting of glaciers, rising sea levels and devastating floods.

The worldwide protests are inspired by Greta Thunberg, a 16-year-old Swedish activist who began a single-handed climate protest outside the Swedish parliament in August. Since then, her school strike movement "Fridays for Future" has grown exponentially.

Global carbon emissions reached a record high last year, despite warnings from the United Nations-backed Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in October that gas emissions must be curbed over the next 12 years to stabilise the climate. (VOA)