Students stage new strike over climate change
Students have staged another strike as they gathered in Bath to protest over climate change.
Young people congregated at the Guildhall and then marched to Southgate shopping centre, chanting and holding placards.
Some of the placards objected to the planned expansion of Bristol Airport, with claims that this could thwart Bristol and North Somerset’s aim to be carbon neutral.
The strike began with a speech from Bath MP Wera Hobhouse, who supported the action of students striking from school and backed a lowered voting age.
A road block was followed by the students marching through the streets towards Southgate, where they held hands, forming a circle in front of the entrances to shop doorways for around 10 minutes.
A member of Bath Youth Climate Alliance addressed the demonstration and said: “We, the young people, are here blocking the doorways to these shops, because we are uniting against a system that is killing us.
“If the fashion industry continues to pollute the waters, the soil, the people, our Earth with chemicals and carbon dioxide, we will meet a tipping point, a threshold, which we have been told by scientists marked in 12 years’ time, will mean that the climate and ecological crisis becomes irreversible.”
“We are here to reveal and demand, kindly and with arms open to a new way of living and being in the world, that fashion brands stand accountable for the environmental atrocities they have committed in the past, but we know the truths that cannot be unknown.
During the strikes several open mic sessions gave the opportunity for discussion of ideas, expression of feeling, fact and a determination to find our way through this crisis together.
Hamish, coordinator of Bath Youth Climate Alliance and student at Bath University said: “A poll recently said that people care more about the environment than the economy and one year ago that would have been unthinkable.
“There are many things that were looking unthinkable one year ago today that are now looking to be the norm, more and more councils are now declaring a climate emergency.
“We are now looking for all schools in B&NES and around the country and the world to declare a climate emergency, to take responsibility for our action from the bottom up.
“We need both we need the national government to reform the curriculum and we also need schools to take responsibility.”
Students plan to strike for the sixth time on July 19.