Students demand change
Taking a day off to deliver environment call to local MP
MORE than 50 high school students skipped school to gather outside federal MP Richard Marles’s Geelong office yesterday to lobby the MP to create sustainable climate change policy.
Most of the students were in Year 11 and took the morning off school to protest amid posters that said “climate change isn’t the future it’s now”, “coral not coal” and “stop Adani”.
The students were hopeful of discussing their concerns with Mr Marles in their threehour protest.
Kardinia International College Year 11 students Laura Kelly and Jude Corbet organised the protest, despite not being old enough to vote.
“Something needs to be done about climate change,” Laura said. “We need groundup climate change prevention measures.
“This month there are heaps of student strikes, so I thought it would be great to have one in Geelong.”
She said she had always been “really interested” in humans’ effect on nature.
Seventeen-year-old Ruby St Ledger said the Govern-
“I think climate change is a pressing issue and we are a generation that can make a change.” RUBY ST LEDGER
ment needed to “put things in perspective” and Mr Marles had “a real chance of making an impact”.
“Although we are influenced by climate change the people less fortunate than us will feel it more,” Ruby said.
“I think climate change is a pressing issue and we are a generation that can make a change.”
Year 11 student Saskia Buijs said Australia needed to “be the one to set the example for other countries”.
Fellow student Isaac Walton said Australia’s “atrocious” environmental policy needed “desperate change”.
“We burn more coal per capita than any other country,” Isaac said.
Education expert and Australian Catholic University senior research fellow Kevin Donnelly said “no student should take time off school to join a political campaign about controversial issues”.
“If they should officially be at school then they should definitely be at school preparing for Year 12 because the last few weeks of term can be very important,” Dr Donnelly said.
“To say there are simple solutions to climate change is very unrealistic.”
The Geelong protest was part of nationwide movement School Strike 4 Climate Action, which is taking place throughout November, with 100 schools taking part.
The protests started in Castlemaine and follow a Swedish student’s promise to sit on the steps of parliament every Friday until Sweden was in line with the Paris Agreement.
Greta Thunberg, 15, missed three weeks of school before Sweden’s September state election in her mission to raise the profile of climate change.