In August 2018, a young 16-year-old teenage girl named Greta Thunberg from Sweden started a movement ‘School Strike for Climate’ change. She would skip her school every Friday and would sit in front of the Swedish Parliament, requesting the government to make laws for climate change.
Soon her movement reached around the world when in November she gave a moving speech in the United Nations Climate Summit to highlight the adversities of Climate Change. On 15th March 2019, 2052 places from 123 countries around the world came to support Greta in her noble motive. Student’s started to skip schools, people skipped offices and came on the road to show their concern about climate change.
Indian Students are no exception to this movement and Students across India skipped their schools 15th March, Friday to support global protest demanding action against climate change.
However, unlike other movements which would have come to rest in a few months, this one was not going to stop. Even after one year of the beginning of the movement, the energy of the students is not going down, but rather escalating. On Friday 20th September 2019, hundreds of thousands of students yet again struck by skipping their school, asking for climate change action.
The movement has spread across 150 countries and students are gathering at around 5000+ places globally to speak in one voice about the impending effects of climate change on the planet.
Students in Delhi & Mumbai and other major cities could be seen holding Boards, wearing school uniform and shouting in one voice “What do we want? Climate Action. When do we want it? Now!”
The boards read “There is no Planet B”, “The oceans are rising and so are we”, “Don’t Burn Our Future”, Fight for Out Future” & other provoking slogans.
Not only India but Protestors from other parts of Southern Asia, Africa, Europe & America are also taking part in the movement. In Sydney, protestors flooded the streets and grabbed around the hold of an 84-acre open land.
Australian Parliamentary Member & Finance Minister, Mathias Cormann had commented upon the issue saying “Students should stay in their school.”
To this, Danielle Porepilliasana, a Sydney high school student, had a befitting reply. She said “World leaders from everywhere are telling us that students need to be at school doing work. I’d like to see them at their parliaments doing their jobs for once.”
Many People from around the world took part in the protest.
The situation is more critical for the low-lying pacific islands as they are the ones to get affected first due to rising sea levels. They have also requested to wealthier nations’ government to help them do something about it.
Children in the Solomon Islands took part in #FridayForFuture by protesting on the shoreline wearing traditional grass skirts and carrying wooden shields. Further, People Displayed Play cards during a rally at Sanur Beach Indonesia requestion Climate Action.
Further, Kolkata City of West Bengal, protested at and around bus terminals, holding placards & distributing flyers to the passer-byes that read “Save Our Planet. Save Our World.”
One of the children said to a reporter, “This is the only planet we have. We wanted to stand for it before we went to school for the day.”
However, China has a different perspective on the situation. There was no protest in the country as it was not authorized by the government. China is the biggest source of GHG emissions, but no youth were seen protesting as a part of the global movement.
Zheng Xiaowen of the China Youth Climate Action Network said Chinese youth would take action one way or another. “Chinese youth have their methods,” she said.
Greta Thunberg started the climate change action revolution by the name ‘School Strike For Climate Change’ on 20th August 2019. The movement has now reached the globe, igniting young minds to take climate action. The movement aims to force governments to male climate-friendly laws and mitigate climate change.
This is critical to see that our children understand the need to bring a change in climate change, but we as a generation, who have spread this poison around, we who are the cause do not understand the crucial situation. Even after so many articles, blogs, posts, so many movements, we fail to establish laws for climate change. Big corporates who have large industrial spreads, who are the biggest financiers of GHG emissions, are the one living comfortably in their Air Conditioned bedrooms, offices & cars. While we struggle with pollution, global temperature rise, weather shiftings, rising sea levels and whatnot.
