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Australian Youth Coal Coalition Shares Fake Photo Of Friday's Climate Change Protest

Australian Youth Coal Coalition Shares Fake Photo Of Friday's Climate Change Protest

Thousands of people believed it was students who left behind the rubbish.

Stewart Perrie

Stewart Perrie

Hundreds of thousands of people attended climate change protests around Australia on Friday, joining millions of others around the world.

Their message was simple: politicians need to act on the issue now or we are going to be royally stuffed in the future.

When it was all over, there was a lot of chatter about the funny signs people had, the speeches that were made and whether it was going to do anything in Canberra.

However, one group got a bit ahead of itself and posted a photo alleging loads of rubbish had been left behind by protestors in Sydney's Hyde Park.

Australian Youth Coal Coalition

Interestingly, that group was the Australian Youth Coal Coalition (yes, that's a thing), and they have been caught out using a photo from an event in the UK, which was months ago.

The AYCC wrote on Facebook: "Look at the mess today's climate protestors left behind in beautiful Hyde Park. So much plastic. So much landfill. So sad."

That photo was actually taken of London's Hyde Park, which, funnily enough, was also used to try and slam climate change protestors attached to organisation Extinction Rebellion, when they held a protest back in April.

Opponents of the organisation or the message they were sending seized on the photo as hypocrisy from the people who are trying to make the planet greener.

However Royal Parks spoke out on Twitter, saying: "There's a lot of incorrect information doing the Twitter rounds this morning. This photo is the result of an unofficial event in Hyde Park on Saturday, not the #ExtinctionRebellion protestors in Marble Arch."

Apparently, the people who left the rubbish behind were people attending a cannabis 420 event in the park. Channel 7 says that it was the Extinction Rebellion protestors who actually helped clean up the mess.

There's no word on whether any rubbish was left at any of the protest sites around Australia on Friday, but at least it's not the amount tried to be shown by the AYCC.

To help pressure the Australian government into addressing the impacts of climate change click here.

Featured Image Credit: Australian Youth Coal Coalition

Topics: Viral, Community, Australia, Citizen Reef