Young climate activist’s letter to Australia
‘I want my childhood back’: young climate activist’s letter to Australia, SMH ,By Bella Burgemeister, May 4, 2019, My name is Bella, I’m 13 years old and I’m a climate change activist and organiser……
My book – Bella’s Challenge – was published in 2017 and now all the schools in the South West region of WA have a copy! But there’s so much more to be done.
For most of my life, the major parties have done as little as they can get away with when it comes to climate change. Are we really that greedy that we can’t see the bigger, global picture?
Young people like me are the ones who will live with the consequences of inaction on climate
change.
So, when I see our Prime Minister tossing around a lump of coal in the Parliament, I know I have to fight back. When I hear both future potential future prime ministers say they support the Adani coal mine, I know I have to fight back.
When the state government here in WA opens up an area two-thirds the size of Tasmania to gas fracking, I know that I have to fight back. And I’m not the only one.
I’m just one of tens of thousands of kids across Australiagiving up part of their childhood to fight for our future because we have so little time to turn around this human made disaster.
We’ve got until 2030 to get serious – that’s just three more elections – so we can’t waste another term of government.
The School Strike for Climate youth have three simple demands:
2. No new fossil fuel projects, especially drilling in the bight and fracking
3. 100 per cent renewable energy by 2030
The last action, which I was so proud to help organise, saw almost 200,000 young people around
Australia march in over 100 towns and cities.
The Prime Minister used the Parliament to tell us to stay in school, and the opposition leader told us we should have done it on the weekend – surely, he knows, as a former union boss, what the point of a strike is. This time we want to send an even bigger message!
This Friday, May 3, was a national day of action to remind the major parties that this is a climate change election.
Our demands aren’t radical, they’re the very least that needs to be done. They will take effort, but aren’t our futures worth it?
I want to stop worrying about my future and I want my childhood back.
Bella Burgemeister is a WA high school student and one of the key organisers of the WA ‘Schools Strike 4 Climate’ actions. https://www.smh.com.au/national/i-want-my-childhood-back-young-climate-activist-s-letter-to-australia-20190504-p51k2i.html
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