SCHOOL kids and students from across the world have gone on strike today to demand urgent action to stop climate change. Organisers say they expect more than one million youngsters to have joined the protests in at least 110 countries. They are demanding that politicians and businesses wake up and take urgent action to slow […]
SCHOOL kids and students from across the world have gone on strike today to demand urgent action to stop climate change.
Organisers say they expect more than one million youngsters to have joined the protests in at least 110 countries.
They are demanding that politicians and businesses wake up and take urgent action to slow global warming before it wrecks the world’s weather.
One striker taking part in the day of action called Fridays for Future was Aussie Nina Pasqualini.
The 13-year-old was attending a rally in Melbourne led by the group Extinction Rebellion — the same group which brought parts of London to a standstill in April with widespread demos.
Nina said: “I’m worried about all the weather disasters.
“Every time we have huge a bush fire here another animal might go extinct.
“The government isn’t doing as much as it should. It’s just scary for younger generations,” she said, holding up a placard seeking to stop a proposed new coal mine in Australia.
Climate change describes a set of circumstances created by humankind that is causing the Earth to heat up.
This rising of the Earth’s temperature is often talked about in the context of the “greenhouse effect” to explain the damage beingt wreaked on our planet.
Without the greenhouse effect the Earth’s surface would be an average of about 60 degrees Fahrenheit cooler, and therefore unlivable.
The effect allows gases in but keeps heat from escaping from the earth, like the glass walls of a greenhouse.
However, over the past century humans have aggravated the greenhouse effect by dramatically increasing the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
Human sources of CO2 come from activities such as deforestation and the burning of fossil fuels like coal, oil and natural gas.
Since the Industrial Revolution the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has rocketed by a third.
This rapid rise has had a direct impact on the Earth’s average temperature, with potentially catastrophic consequences.
The walkouts have been inspired by 16-year-old Greta Thunberg, who has become a global figurehead after protesting outside Sweden’s parliament in 2018.
Brandishing a “school strike for climate change” placard, she said she was refusing to attend classes until Swedish politicians acted now.
The last coordinated international demo was on March 15, where an estimated 1.6 million students from 125 countries went on strike.
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