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.”

Students striking for climate action are showing the exact skills employers look for

On March 15 2019 thousands of students across Australia will skip school and join the global strike for climate action. This is the second time students have taken to the streets to demand more government action on climate change. Last time they did so, in November 2018, the federal resources minister, Matt Canavan, told them:

Why would striking students end up in the ‘dole’ queue’ when
they’re seeking to understand a global issue, taking action
 and clearly articulating their perspective? 

The best thing you’ll learn about going to a protest is how to join the dole queue. Because that’s what your future life will look like, up in a line asking for a handout, not actually taking charge for your life and getting a real job.

Politicians are up in arms about tomorrow’s protest too. New South Wales is just over a week away from a state election where climate change is a key issue. NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian has slammed as “appalling” comments made by Opposition Leader Michael Daley in support of the strike.

Read the piece from The Conversation by a Lecturer in Education from CQUniversity, Australia, by Karena Menzie-Ballantyne - “Students striking for climate action are showing the exact skills employers look for.”

Waggers or future leaders? Students skip school to fight climate change

Students across Australia will skip school en masse to protest inaction on climate change, drawing both praise and criticism from pundits and politicians.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison told students to
 stay in school, urging "less activism". 

“We are school kids temporarily sacrificing our education in order to save our futures from dangerous climate change,” School Strike 4 Climate organisers said of the Friday protest.

While former Gillard government education minister and longtime environmental activist Peter Garrett applauded the students, the Prime Minister, many commentators and parents have slammed them as shirkers.

“The patronising idiocy of climate-deniers is contemptible,” Mr Garrett said on Thursday.

Read the story from The New Daily - “Waggers or future leaders? Students skip school to fight climate change.”

Gunnedah student organises Strike 4 Change

A Gunnedah teenager is calling on students, teachers and community to join him in a march to raise awareness of climate change.

Year 10 student Hugh Hunter is
leading the charge in Gunnedah.

Year 10 student Hugh Hunter has joined the School Strike 4 Climate movement, which will see students across Australia strike on Friday. The movement is calling for no more coal or gas, no Adani coal mine, and 100 per cent renewable energy by 2030.

Read the Namoi Valley Independent story by Vanessa Höhnke - “Gunnedah student organises Strike 4 Change.”

Cowandilla Primary School students learn about climate change

Learning about climate change.

At Cowandilla Primary School in Adelaide, students learn about climate change from an early age. 

Inspired by what they learn in the classroom, the school’s Climate Change Leaders are cutting their carbon footprints everywhere from the energy they use to the food they eat, challenging their parents to take action too.

Watch this YouTube video - Inconvenient Youth (Australia).

This California teen studies climate data after school

Some high school students find data analysis boring, but one California teen loves it.

McGregor: “When I get home, I spend my free time creating different graphs and reports on how climate change is affecting southern California.”

Studying climate data after school.

That’s high school student Edgar McGregor. When he first saw graphs of regional climate change, he was struck by the sharp rise in temperatures, especially over the past decade. So he began digging into climate data, looking at …

McGregor: “… which months are changing more than others. Is one month getting drier while another is getting wetter? Just to kind of understand what I can expect when I’m in my 60s, 70s, and 80s.”

Read the Yale Climate Connections story - “This California teen studies climate data after school.”

India plants 50 million trees in one day - a world record?

50 million trees in one
day - a world record?

Hundreds of thousands of people in India's most populous state jostled for space Monday as they attempted to plant 50 million trees over 24 hours in hopes of shattering the world record.

Officials in Uttar Pradesh distributed millions of saplings to be planted across the state to help India's efforts to increase its forest cover, and to get into Guinness World Records for the most trees planted in a day. The current record is 847,275, set in Pakistan in 2013.

More than 800,000 people, including students, lawmakers, government officials, housewives and volunteers from nonprofit organizations, headed out Monday to plant the saplings at designated spots along country roads and highways, rail tracks and forest lands

Read the ABC News story - “India State Aims to Plant a Record 50 Million Trees in a Day.”