Student Walkout for Climate Change
In August of 2018, then 15 year old Greta Thunberg began walking out of school to raise awareness for the climate. She would leave every Friday to sit in front of the Swedish parliament and hold a sign that said “school strike for climate”. In the beginning she was alone. But now, Greta has supporters all around the globe, including right here at Victoria School.
On March 15, students at our school decided to join Greta in her fight against climate change by walking out just like she does. In the morning, secondary students gathered in front of the main entrance to our school for half an hour to demonstrate their support for Greta’s movement. Later that day, some students went down to the legislature to continue the protest.
Danica Wilson, a reporter for The Victoria Voice, interviewed Cordelius Hultberg, a co-organizer of the Legislature protest and a member of the interact club.
When did this movement of Greta’s reach our school? Why?
I think a lot of people have been following it already but there was just no one who had taken the initiative and said “let’s do this” and I volunteer with an organization called Climate Justice Edmonton and at a meeting there we were talking about how to engage more youths and I brought up the idea of hopping on the bandwagon of the strikes. And we started looking into it and saw that there was this global strike and as I talked to more and more people and I brought people from the school as well, we got excited about having also just something at the school, there were some people at the school who were unable to go to the Legislature but we wanted them to be able to participate in this movement as well.
Why is it so important that we take part in this and why now?
Technically we should have been doing this years ago, but it’s better late than never. But there’s so much evidence to this there’s no way you can deny this but that’s exactly what many of the politicians and the adults are doing and we need them to wake up. It’s our future they’re holding in their hands and right now they’re not treating it correct and we need to let them know that we won’t stand for that.
What have recent events in politics (Canada and America) done to heighten the issue you're protesting against?
We’ve seen a lot of things happen over the last couple of years in North America. Forest fires have increased tremendously, we see drought in many areas, flooding in other areas. Something here in Canada that is very visual is the Pike Beatle, it’s larvae eat the pine trees, beforehand, the numbers were kept in check having weeks of -30 degree weather which would kill most of them off. However, for the last ten or so years we haven’t had enough cold weather to really kill off the population which has cost huge areas of forest to just die out.
For those who are trying or wanting to help but don’t know how, what can they do?
The biggest thing they can do is join the movement, there’s only so much you can do as a private person. Of course it does help to change your lightbulbs, to drive less, take public transportation all those things, it helps but the biggest problem is not everyday people it’s the big polluters. So I think join the movement and putting pressure on politicians.
In relation to the last point, Hultberg shared a list of goals and demands from the club in which they wish to achieve through the protests.
These are the demands:
Keep warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius: transition to a 100% renewable, net-zero emission economy by 2030. Uphold the Paris Agreement. .
Decolonize the land: Respect the rights, title and sovereignty of Indigenous Peoples.
Immediately end all fossil fuel subsidies and new fossil fuel development: Instead use government money to start renewable energy development. Halt new fossil fuel projects, as they are not the way of the future and only add to our dependency. .
Just transition for all workers: Provide retraining and create new jobs by funding renewables, public transit, education, and other climate solutions.
Promote and engage youth views on the future.
With immense success, our school marched with all things environment pushing the idea that it is our future in the politicians' hands. They encourage you to join the fight and stand up for climate justice after all, there’s not much we can do alone.
