2nd Day of MSNBC’s Climate Forum Coincides With Global Protests

Presidential candidates will take the stage for a second day Friday to detail their plans for fighting climate change as part of a televised forum hosted by MSNBC. Meanwhile, global climate protests were also set to take place ahead of a U.N. summit in New York, with more than 800 events planned in the U.S. alone.

In total, 12 presidential candidates – 11 Democrats and one Republican – are participating in the two-day, town-hall style event at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., as Chris Hayes and Ali Velshi interview participants one-by-one and take questions from the audience.

Thursday’s lineup included Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet, entrepreneur Andrew Yang, author Marianne Williamson, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, former Rep. John Delaney, D-Md., Rep. Tim Ryan, D-Ohio, and former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Juliàn Castro.

Early Friday, some of the first rallies in what is being billed as a “global climate strike” kicked off in Australia’s largest city, Sydney, and the national capital, Canberra. Australian demonstrators called for their nation, which is the world’s largest exporter of coal and liquid natural gas, to take more drastic action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The worldwide protests are partly inspired by the activism of Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg, who has staged weekly demonstrations under the heading “Fridays for Future” over the past year, calling on world leaders to step up their efforts against climate change.

Last year, the UN issued a report detailing how weather, health and ecosystems could be saved if the world’s leaders could somehow limit future human-caused warming to just 0.9 degrees Fahrenheit, but also warned it would require “rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.