10 reasons school students are striking over climate change
Here's what the school climate strikers are demanding.
Pic: Julian Meehan, Flickr.
Students in more than 100 countries are on ‘strike’ today to draw attention to climate change. Here we publish the demands of the UK climate strikers.
Young people across the world have been excluded from participating in the fight against the climate crisis.
In the UK and globally, we are already facing the devastating effects of the climate crisis. Where the older generations have failed us, we have been left with no choice but to take direct action fight for Climate Justice.
Here’s 10 reasons why striking to combat the ecological crisis that is being handed to us is vital to protect our futures:
1. The UN’s climate report in 2018 gives us 12 years to cut emissions by 50% to avoid catastrophe.
2. 10% of the world’s population will be climate refugees by 2050, with rising sea levels and crop failure.
3. We’re the first generation to know what we’re doing and the last generation to be able to stop it.
4. Just 100 companies are responsible for over 70% of the greenhouse gas emissions on the planet.
5. Our carbon emissions continue to go up, despite global government pledges.
6. 200 species go extinct every day, 1000 times the natural rate.
7. A rubbish truck of plastic is dumped into the ocean every single minute.
8. We’re in an emergency, we need unprecedented global action.
9. By 2048 there will be no fish left in our oceans at the current rate of over-fishing and pollution.
10. Young people, with more of their life ahead of them, have the most to lose from an unsafe future.
We, the students, demand that:
1. The Government declare a climate emergency and prioritise the protection of life on Earth, taking active steps to achieve climate justice.
2. The national curriculum is reformed to address the ecological crisis as an educational priority.
3. The Government communicate the severity of the ecological crisis and the necessity to act now to the general public.
4. The Government recognise that young people have the biggest stake in our future, by incorporating youth views into policy making and bringing the voting age down to 16.
See also: “School climate strikes: Why I’m taking part“
This is reposted from the UK Student Cimate Network.
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