Schoolchildren go on strike across world over climate crisis

Hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren across the world have gone on strike in protest at the escalating climate crisis.

Teenage protesters in Warsaw, Poland, hold up placards
calling on politicians to address climate crisis. 

Students from 1,800 towns and cities in more than 110 countries stretching from India to Australia and the UK to South Africa, walked out of lessons on Friday, the organisers of the action said.

This is the latest school climate strike, inspired by teenager Greta Thunberg, who has become a global figurehead since protesting outside Sweden’s parliament in 2018. The young people are demanding politicians take urgent action to avoid catastrophic ecological breakdown.

In London, thousands gathered in the sunshine in Parliament Square chanting, “Where the fuck is the government”, and “This is what democracy looks like”, before staging a sit-down protest outside the department of education.

Read the story from The Guardian by Matthew Tayor - “Schoolchildren go on strike across world over climate crisis.”

Young people have led the climate strikes. Now we need adults to join us too

Tomorrow, schoolchildren and students will be out on the streets again, in huge numbers, in 150 countries, at over 4,000 events, demanding that governments immediately provide a safe pathway to stay within 1.5C of global heating. We spent weeks and months preparing for this day. We spent uncountable hours organising and mobilising when we could have just hung out with our friends or studied for school.

School students protest against the climate crisis in Melbourne, May 2019.

We don’t feel like we have a choice: it’s been years of talking, countless negotiations, empty deals on climate change and fossil fuel companies being given free rides to drill beneath our soils and burn away our futures for their profit. Politicians have known about climate change for decades. They have willingly handed over their responsibility for our future to profiteers whose search for quick cash threatens our very existence.

We have learned that if we don’t start acting for our future, nobody else will make the first move. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.

Read the opinion piece from The Guardian - “Young people have led the climate strikes. Now we need adults to join us too.”