Swedish teenage activist Greta Thunberg urged European politicians on Friday to focus on a climate crisis instead of “bickering”, as children walked out of classes around the world to back her demands for urgent action to curb carbon emissions. Thunberg, 16, said the threat of societal breakdown posed by runaway climate change should overshadow every other campaign issue in the European Union’s parliamentary elections this week. “If the EU were to decide to seriously fight the climate crisis, it would mean a decisive global change. And the EU election should reasonably only be about this. But it isn’t,” Thunberg told thousands gathered in Kungstradgarden square in Stockholm’s banking district. By 2200 GMT, more than 1.8 million people in 2,350 cities across 125 countries had joined the strike, according to a tally on the Facebook page of the Fridays for Future movement, a network of young climate protesters. An estimated 1.5 million young people took part in a previous global school strike on March 15. In New York, several hundred children and teenagers marched from Columbus Circle to Times Square, shouting their support for a “Green New Deal” proposed in Congress that calls among other things for 100 percent of US power demand to be met though renewable energy sources within 10 years.