Students again striking for climate

PASSIONATE young people will take to the Bendigo Library gardens this Friday to have their voices heard on issues around climate change.

Year 9 Bendigo South-East College student Lilly Correll said there will be a banner for people to sign, and people are asked to leave a flower to show solidarity in a drop-in, drop-out style event.

“Because of the COVID uncertainty we really had to cut off a lot of our ideas and keep it simple,” she said.

“We worked with a lot of younger people as well as older folk passionate about the climate as well and had conversations about how we can create a really powerful strike and send a message to our Federal MPs as well as our local government.”

Students from schools across Australia will be participating in the School Strike for Climate, demanding no new coal, oil and gas projects, for Australia to achieve 100 per cent renewable energy by 2030 and a job transition program for fossil fuel workers.

Ms Correll said it’s important issues such as climate change are not forgotten during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We’ve got vaccines for COVID, we’ve got ways we can hopefully manage it but at the moment we’ve not got ways we can keep everyone safe into the future with this climate catastrophe that we’re facing,” she said.

She also said the youth are concerned that little action has been taken to combat climate change, especially after the 2020 bushfires.

“So many people believe we have to make a difference otherwise we’re going to have a complete catastrophe,” she said.

“It’s really worrying to me and a lot of other younger people and at the end of the day we’ll be the ones still around while our politicians and government agencies making these decisions will be in the ground.”