Valentine’s Day youth strike to send love to Australian schoolchildren
Cambridge Schools Eco Council has dedicated this Friday’s Valentine’s Day youth strike march through Cambridge to Australian youngsters caught up in the recent devastating bushfires around the country.
The climate change group, which has its first anniversary on March 9, will meet at Shire Hall at 9.30am prior to marching into the centre of Cambridge around 10am “to raise awareness and - on Valentine’s day - to show we care about the terrible impacts of climate change on children and wildlife who are already losing their homes and their lives, especially in Australia”.
“Fires and floods are raging, and so are we!” says the council’s Nico Roman, 12.
“We’ll be carrying home-made art symbols of torches, smoke and fires, and also blue floodwaters, with us when we march, and 30 children from different Cambridgeshire schools will be running through the march, wearing masks to speak for the koalas, kangaroos, wombats, wallabies and other unique, vulnerable and voiceless Australian animals who have been dying by the thousands in the bush fires due to climate change.”
The group is releasing its open letter on February 12.
A spokeperson said: “Tomorrow we are also sending our open letter to the world’s schoolchildren who are also losing their homes, especially in Australia, as a plea to decision-makers everywhere to listen to the science and act now to stop this madness.”
In the letter, the young activists say: “We are writing in support of all the school children, wildlife and everyone whose homes and lives are being lost by the ferocious fires and floods in Australia, and around the world. We feel it is terribly unjust to continue burning fossil fuels and carry on harming our future. As children, and as the first generation to be hit so hard by climate change, we need to look out for each other.
“Right now, we can only imagine what it must be like to live with the fear that your own home may burn. We have been devastated by all the news and tragic losses to habitats and wildlife, and we are thinking of you every day and know that the same could so easily happen to us.
“As pupils from over 30 local schools and voices of over 3,000 local citizens in Cambridge, UK, together with you and other friends around the world who have marched together in the global climate days of action, we write in solidarity today.
“We are desperately worried as our planet continues to heat up, and we carry on facing a worsening fate of extreme weather conditions. We are terrified that we are reaching the highest record level of CO2 in our atmosphere for roughly a million years. It is the responsibility of us all not only to reduce our carbon footprints urgently and immediately, but to become carbon neutral and then negative as soon as possible.
“Our whole world is at stake. As Greta Thunberg from Sweden has said: ‘We do need hope, but the one thing that we need more than hope is action. Once we start to act, hope is everywhere.’ We may be geographically distant, but as kids terrified by the mess that bad decisions have got us all into, we stand right by your side.”
