A girl holds a placard showing former Flemish Climate Minister Joke Schauvliege as she marches together with thousands of youngsters during a climate change protest in Leuven, Belgium, Thursday, Feb. 7, 2019. A Belgian Environment Minister has been forced to resign after saying she had state security confirmation that massive climate demonstrations in recent weeks were staged as a plot against her. (AP Photo/Geert Vanden Wijngaert)

Tens of thousands of teenagers and students protested across Europe this month in favor of stronger global climate action. The movement, which began in Sweden, was sparked by teenage girls, and is slowly making its way to the U.S.

The student protesters are asking that governments act responsibly to prevent the planet from reaching the 2 degree warming mark, which peer-reviewed scientists say is the point at which the planet will likely see the .

Belgium has held some of the largest and most impactful protests to date. In December, 65,000 people took to the streets in Brussels to protest climate inaction, Forbes , which was the largest mass demonstration in the country’s history.

For the past four Thursdays mass walkouts by students-- many of them in high school-- have taken place. The movement was accidentally spearheaded by 17-year-old Anuna De Wever, Buzzfeed .

De Wever and her best friend, Kyra Gantois, filmed a video and posted it online where they called on students to protest in early January. They expected only a handful of people to turn up, but were stunned to find a crowd of around 3,000. The protests have now as large as 35,000 on every Thursday since, with even larger protests on the weekends.

The teenager-inspired protests last month prompted one of the country’s environment ministers, Joke Schauvliege to . Schauvliege claimed the country's intelligence service had told her the protests were a “set-up” and not “spontaneous actions of solidarity with our climate.” The Flemish politician later stepped down after admitting that the security services told her no such thing.

De Wever was inspired to climate action after seeing the video of another teenager, Greta Thunberg from Sweden, who, at 15 launched a solitary protest last September by boycotting school every Friday and picketing in front of the Swedish Parliament to demand the country meet obligations under the Paris climate accords.

Thunberg delivered an impassioned speech about climate action to world leaders, billionaires and influencers at the annual World Economic Forum convening in Davos in January.

Of that experience, Thunberg the BBC, "My was that most emissions are caused by a few people, the very rich people, who are here in Davos."

Thunberg, De Wever, and the students marching in the streets have been mobilized to action by what they see as failures in global leadership.

Countries haven’t even come close to meeting their commitments to cut carbon emission, explained a issued in December.

In December, Belgium decided to ease their carbon cutting efforts.

U.S. President Donald Trump has , as well as vowed to , and on the current state of the planet.

Youth for Climate, the group set up to organize the Belgian school walkouts, has said the students aren’t planning to stop any time soon. Various walkout movements across Europe are coordinating and are planning for a global climate protest on 15 March, which could see extensive walkouts across the continent, and possibly North America.