CLIMATE change protesters have staged 'die-ins' at York city centre businesses and banks.

Campaigners wanting more action to reduce carbon emissions gathered in St Helen's Square yesterday lunchtime and then walked to Barclays Bank in Parliament Street, where they lay down as if dead in the foyer.

They met with bemused looks from staff and customers but no attempt to move them on.

After 11 minutes, they moved on to Primark in Piccadilly, where they staged a similar protest in the queuing area for the ground-floor check-in desks.

Their actions, intended to symbolise the dying planet. met with a hostile reaction from some shoppers wanting to pay for items, with one muttering they should 'get a job' and another asking: "Is this legal?"

Staff tannoyed for customers to use the tills upstairs and police were called in. Several officers arrived in the store to speak to the protesters, who then left of their own accord after 11 minutes.

One of the organisers, York Young Greens co-chair Chloe Wilcox. said they were then moving on to stage die-ins outside McDonalds in Blake Street and finally in HSBC in Parliament Street.

She said the four businesses were chosen because of the banks' investments in fossil fuels, and the impact on the environment of 'fast fashion' and 'fast food.'

The march and die-ins follow a major rally yesterday in St Helen's Square yesterday, attended by many hundreds of people, which were part of a global protest against a 'climate catastrophe.'

The campaigners handed out leaflets yesterday publicising an 'extinction rebellion' event in London next month and claiming that the planet was in trouble, with rising sea levels, heatwaves killing crops, the Arctic melting and Africa and the Amazon 'on fire, but with those in power offering only empty words and weak promises.