Jasmine Trecento is guest blogger for World Environment Day (5 June).
On 21 May, as a secondary school student from rural Victoria, I took a trip down to Treasury Gardens in Melbourne to take part in something that has a huge impact on my generation’s future.
A protest organized by ‘School Strike 4 Climate’ was being held in every state in Australia, to bring attention to the ongoing issue of climate change. The strike, aimed at the Morrison Government, was to show that instead of creating thousands of jobs for Australians in the renewable energy industry, they are lining the pockets of gas and coal companies. Such companies are the main contributors to the climate crisis.
With the strike beginning at one o’clock, students from all across Victoria began to make their way to central Melbourne. The protest started with Ella Simons and Anjali Sharma acknowledging the custodians of the land that we were gathering on, which was and always will be stolen land. They then went to on to explain to the crowds why we were all here and what this protest was aiming to do: to show the government that despite their efforts to ignore the problem, we, the upcoming generation, are going to fight for our future and planet. After a few more speakers took to the stage, the strike began.
With over 20,000 people coming together, the majority of them being school students from various schools across the state, it was a massive show of unity and strength. We are not going to let the government that is supposed to be protecting us, ruin our chances of having a future. We are calling on the Government to take our future seriously and treat climate change as what it is: a crisis.
I believe that the reason so many students participated in this strike is because we know that without us acting upon the issue, nothing is going to change, and we will be stuck in a world that current politicians have neglected. By taking action, we are hoping that the government will know that we will not accept their ‘efforts’ to look after future generations. If they don’t start making changes soon, we will be the ones in power before too long, and we will not let this issue continue to be ignored.
The millions of dollars being spent and put towards mining fossil fuels is an amount that could be used in so many different areas to save our planet. If the money being spent on the things that are creating so many issues on our earth were instead put towards collecting energy from natural resources like sunlight, rain, tides, waves, and wind, not only would we be creating jobs and a sustainable way to live but saving resources and our lives.
We will not stop protesting and fighting for our right to be able to live our lives without the worry that we won’t have a future. Fund our Future, not gas.
© 2021 Jasmine Trecento/Geoff Allshorn
All rights returned to the author.