STUDENT campaigners staged a climate strike in Glasgow today in protest against the “failure” of the Cop26 summit that took place in the city one year ago. 

Demonstrators from the Fridays For Future Scotland group gathered in Kelvin Way in the morning before marching through the city centre to a rally in George Square, taking the same route that the group followed during Cop26 on November 5 last year. 

Organisers said the purpose of the march was to highlight the failures of Cop26 and the links between the climate crisis and the cost-of-living crisis before a new climate summit is held in Egypt next week. 

Adam Ballard, 16, one of the protest organisers, said: “The climate crisis and the cost-of-living crisis have the same root: the refusal to move away from fossil fuels.

“There is no oil shortage; there is a corrupt system that prioritises profit over people.

“While ordinary people are forced to choose between heating and eating, the people in power and fossil fuel chief executives continue to make unimaginable profits.”

Representatives of almost 200 countries met in Glasgow last year with the goal of securing pledges that would prevent average global temperatures from rising more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. 

Following the talks, many green groups declared the summit a “failure” because the 1.5°C target was only met on the condition that countries would pledge to improve emission-cutting targets the following year. 

Others hailed the summit as a success, with key pledges on phasing-down coal, reversing deforestation and cutting methane emissions all agreed by the participating nations. 

However, the United Nations revealed this week that, since the summit, only 24 new or updated climate plans have been submitted. 

In Britain, the government has recently opened bidding for new North Sea gas and oil exploration licences.