All these climate talks are actually achieving nothing

Holly Gillibrand, 13

“CLIMATE change is what concerns me most about the world. My family have been worried about climate change, but it’s only started dawning on me in the last few years that it’s really serious and that we need to do something about it.

We stopped eating meat because that’s bad for the environment and we try to limit the amount of times we go in the car. We use green energy and we’re going to start growing our own vegetables.

A couple of weeks ago I went into Fort William town centre, and I talked to local cafes about using plastic straws because to make plastic you use fossil fuels.

We recently had a meeting because we’re trying to create a Fort William Extinction Rebellion group so we can do some action in 2019.

I think, politically, there just needs to be much more action, because politicians and leaders are having all these climate talks but nothing is actually happening. We could tax CO2, we could tax meat to encourage more sustainable and ethical eating, but that isn’t happening. The politicians and the Government need to be doing much more.

I’ve been reading about it and the UK Government is planning to reduce 1990 greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2050, which is not enough. There need to be zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 worldwide.

There are still people in my class who don’t think that climate change exists. I think that one thing that needs to happen in 2019 is for schools to start educating young people on climate change. There needs to be more awareness.

In one of my classes at high school we had some lessons on the global goals and it was depressing that climate action is number 13 when it should be number one.

I’ve seen quite a few of the talks by Greta Thunberg [the teenage activist who has inspired a generation with her climate strikes] and, in fact, after the holidays I’m going to start climate striking – only for an hour every Friday. I’m just going to sit outside school for an hour in the morning. I’m trying to get other people involved but on February 15 there’s going to be a UK-wide school strike.”