Joseph Dawson

JD

Climate Strike

16 March 2019

So, for my second post I wanted to get straight into it. Yesterday, Friday 15th March 2019, I was in London along with a few friends as part of the ongoing student climate strikes. The atmosphere was empowering, even if the air was disgusting.

Last month we went to Southampton and there were about 80 people. It was social and everyone spoke to each other, group activities ran and when a speech was made the whole crowd could hear it. But London, London was an entirely different ball game. With an estimated 20,000 people it was a beautifully controlled chaos. 20,000 young people all striking for what they believed in; we filled Parliament Square, shouted down Downing Street and flooded Victoria Memorial before doing the same in reverse with the police watching over and keeping us safe.

Chants of "CHANGE NOW" filled the air as young people unable to vote demanded to be heard. Fuelled by a government that's focus is elsewhere (a little thing called Brexit), we took to the streets to show them there is more than one issue at hand, the UN report released in October gives us 12 years to cut our emissions in half and since 100 companies are responsible for 71% of emissions its up to government legislation to save us.

Of course 1 location, 1 government isn't enough to prevent a global disaster so if you thought 20,000 people was the grand total, that's a dire mistake, London was just one location. There were more than 100 other locations in the UK alone and more than 1,000 locations globally, involving in excess of 100 countries, creating a total of over 1,000,000 students striking with 1 common goal, to save our atmosphere and reduce carbon emissions, hopefully with all these numbers the governments of our Earth will take notice.

All this action was inspired simply by one, inspirational Swedish student. Recently nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize, Greta Thunberg is the incredible girl who has started a global campaign (#FridaysForFuture). It started with her quite simply striking outside the Swedish Government alone and now, only 30 weeks later, it's a global campaign with over one million strikers.

This is an issue we care about. This is an issue you should care about to.