Friday November 30 – Australian students Strike For Climate Action
Students in each state capital and across 20 regional Australian centres will walk out of their classrooms this week to tell politicians that more of the same climate inaction is not good enough.
Here are some of the lessons they hope to teach.
‘If we really want a better planet Earth’
Lucie Atkin-Bolton, 11, who will soon graduate as school captain at Sydney’s Forest Lodge Public School, says Australia should be sourcing 100 per cent of its electricity from solar power: “I can’t understand why it hasn’t been done yet.”
“Right now the political leaders aren’t doing very much at all,” Lucie says. “They’re more promoting coal-sourced energy when, if we really want to have a better planet Earth, we need renewable energy.”
Climate change “is a crisis”, she says. “It’s not going to happen in two or three decades – it’s happening now.”
Lucie says “whole islands will disappear” as warming lifts sea levels, and the time for thinking is running out.
While Lucie hopes to attend the main strike event at NSW Parliament, school principal Stephen Reed has been supportive, she says. Students remaining behind are expected to be involved in school-wide activities.
Fear’ is a motivator
Vivienne Paduch isn’t waiting for Friday’s gathering – where the Manly Selective school student will also be a speaker – to get active. This Sunday, she’ll be busy at a “Crafternoon”, creating banners and honing her speech.
“Firstly it’s fear,” Vivienne says. “I’m really scared for me and for my generation and the generations that are going to come after me from the implications of what climate change will mean.
“It’s only going to get worse if we don’t take action now.
“Striking for climate action is more important [to me] than missing a day of school.
“With all the support we’ve got this year, I can see it happening again next year,” Vivienne says. “It’s very important to keep pressure on the politicians.”
‘Young people have to step up’
For Aisheeya Huq, a year 10 student at Auburn Girls High School, the School Strike is a natural extension of her volunteer work for the Australian Youth Climate Coalition.
The 16-year-old says her generation can’t ignore climate change and environmental destruction and the justice issues that flow from them.
“We’re going to have to face the consequences [from the work of] a lot of the policymakers and politicians … due to their lack of understanding and perhaps care for the future,” Aisheeya says.
“Young people have realised that because we are going to be affected, we have to step up, and we have to do something about it.”
Politicians talk about the importance of education and shouldn’t be surprised when students join the climate dots. “If you care so much about our education and what you’re teaching us, why aren’t you doing anything about it?” she says.
‘Massive emergency’
Students from Castlemaine, a town in the Victorian goldfields north-west of Melbourne, were the originators of the School Strike movement in Australia after reading about Greta Thunberg and also the special Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 1.5 degree report.
“It’s a massive emergency,” Tully says. “We want all governments to take it seriously.”
She says heatwaves, flooding and worsening bushfires are a portent of much worse to come if temperature rises reach 4-5 degrees – the course they are now on.
Tully would like to see support for renewable energy and greater promotion of electric vehicles given priority.
“Climate change matters more for us,” she says. “We need to fight for our future.”
Callum Neilson-Bridgefoot, an 11-year-old student at Castlemaine Primary School, has also taken part in four strike activities already.
“Sacrificing a little bit of my education will help in the long term,” Callum said. “I work really hard when I’m at school.
“Any political leader can really make a difference – they have much more power than we do,” he says. “Right now what they are doing is not enough.”
Greta’s actions were a key inspiration. “I was really moved,” Callum says. “It was really brave and very powerful.”
It was so easy’
Greta Thunberg has seen her Friday vigils for action on climate change copied in many parts of the world, including Finland, Germany, Belgium, The Netherlands, Norway, Italy, Canada and Britain. “And Australia of course!” she says.
“The thing I think surprised me the most was that it was so easy,” she tells Fairfax Media, via email.
“I remember thinking before I started ‘why has no one ever done this before?'”
“All we need to do is treat it like a crisis with headlines and news reporting all the time. And I mean A L L the time,” she writes. “As if there was a war going on.”
Greta wants her Australian acolytes to know she is aware of their actions: “I would tell them that they are making a huge difference. I read about them in newspapers up here in Europe and it’s hopeful beyond my imagination.
“And Australia is a huge climate villain, I am sorry to say. Your carbon footprint is way bigger than Sweden and we are among the worst in the world.”
Greta says leading by example is important, as is “saying the things that are too uncomfortable to say”.
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