Climate steps demanded by strident crowd
Thousands of students gathered at Wellington’s Civic Square to march to Parliament yesterday, demanding more urgent action on climate change.
Held for the first time since 2019, the protest is part of a nationwide movement of school students called School Strike 4 Climate.
Wellington protest organiser Seren Lewis said there had been a lot of build-up to this protest, especially as last year’s could not go ahead because of Covid-19 restrictions.
“It’s clear that our Government is not doing enough. All the people here think so, it’s not just a minority.”
The movement’s key demands were a transition to a greener economy, and assisting Pacific nations to do the same.
“Our Pacific neighbours are obviously at the forefront of climate change. They’re going to be dealing with island submersion and sea levels rising,” Lewis said.
“There isn’t a huge platform for them to raise their voices so it’s about raising awareness for it.”
Hundreds of students gathered at the stairs at Civic Square, with more flowing back towards the library. Signs such as “last exit before doomsday” and “we’re giving up lessons to teach you one” could be seen in the crowd.
Natasha Lenaston Bagnall said the “impending doom” of climate change was an issue their generation had grown up with.
“We want to fight to have our future and it’s not being dealt with enough.”
University student Teresa Davenport said climate change seemed like “the end of humanity”.
“The only solution we can see is to reduce our carbon emissions and we need to be doing that more urgently.
The Zero Carbon Act is rubbish. They think it’s a solution but we need to step it up more.”