Striking pupils in Senedd climate-change protest
HUNDREDS of Welsh children are set to skip school in order to protest outside the Senedd this Friday.
The action is to protest about what they see as the woeful inaction by national government in the face of what climate scientists see as impending climate disaster.
Inspired by similar actions in Sweden, Australia and Belgium, the Wales protest is part of a UK-wide strike by young people.
The organiser of the Cardiff strike is 17-year-old Beth Irving, who is in the lower sixth at UWC Atlantic College in the Vale of Glamorgan.
She said: “We are striking on Friday to go to the Senedd and issue our four demands. Some are going to school and then standing up and walking out, whereas some who live further away are going straight there.
“We are hoping to have a couple of hundred in Cardiff. There will be at least 100 from my school. We welcome anyone who wants to come.
“We have been getting a mixed reaction from school as to whether they will be supporting it. It is from 10am until 2pm.”
According to Beth, the way the young people see it, missing a day of school is nothing compared to the damage of ignoring the threat posed by climate change.
“No-one seems to be aware of quite how bad this crisis is,” she said.
“People have been hearing for years the effect it is going to have on the future. All around the world you can see – the polar vortex in the US and Australia just having its hottestever January. Things are happening now and the media and government seem unaware.
“It has to be a concerted effort on behalf of government.”
It is not just sixth-formers who are striking – 18 children from Radnor Primary School, in Cardiff, will also be among those protesting.
The school has already proved its green credentials with an afterschool eco-club.
“It takes some decision-making on behalf of schools and parents as the strike happens during school hours,” said teacher Eoghan Walsh, who started the eco-club along with Kane Morgan and Sarah Royle.
“But we feel there is an important lesson for young people by participating in a protest about government inaction on climate, especially when they trace back the history of this movement.”
According to Mr Walsh the younger generation are far more clued up to the threat of climate change.
“In my opinion my generation were the ones who asked the questions about climate change,” he said.
“The new generation are asking why these decisions are not being taken. They see it in black and white.
“Now those questions need to be answered.
“There is jargon around it like ‘greenhouse gases’, but for young people it is just normal for them, they understand it.”
The movement started with a Swedish teenager.
In the wake of the October 2018 IPCC 1.50C report, Greta Thunberg, then 15, put climate change firmly in the spotlight after skipping school to demonstrate outside the Swedish Parliament.
She said her actions were a bid to get politicians to “...prioritise the climate question, focus on the climate and treat it like a crisis”.
The report’s headline was that humanity has just 12 years to avert catastrophic climate change, and has re-energised the environmental movement.
Since the first action in Sweden, a wave of school strikes have rippled across the globe, from Belgium to Australia, attracting unprecedented numbers.