CAMPAIGNER’S VIEW

Erin Curtis, youth striker from Glasgow and part of the UK Student Climate Network

For the past while, everyone in our group Scottish Youth Climate Strikes has been busy preparing for today.

There’s been a reason for all the hectic work, though; the Global Strike for Climate. We’ve been putting huge amounts of effort into this vastly important strike. Millions of people are gathering across the world to protest Government inaction on climate change.

The Global Strike for Climate is our biggest demonstration yet. It’s unique in that we’ve asked adults to join us in demanding action.

Today people of all ages and all backgrounds are uniting against climate change, and it’s going to be a day of historic proportions. It’s crucial that we send a clear message to the Government that caring about the environment isn’t some sort of trendy fad exclusive to young people- it’s a huge issue which everyone should care about, since it will affect all of us.

READ MORE: Does Glasgow really not understand climate change?

We must show those at the top that we’re not going to just go away, since the climate crisis isn’t just going to disappear either. Like us, it’s effects will only grow stronger and stronger. In the future, climate change will not go unnoticed, and so we can’t afford to let it go unnoticed while we still have the chance to do something.

People around the globe are already suffering the impacts of the climate crisis right now, just look at the devastating impacts of hurricane Dorian in the Bahamas and the countless awful natural disasters that we’ve seen just like it.

Climate change is here and now, and the Global Strike is a chance for all of us to demand the government to stop perceiving it as some far-off threat for the far down the line.

This issue is both amazingly simple and infinitely complex. It’s true to say that this is an incredibly difficult problem and that there are so many things we must address to fix it, but it’s also clear that we don’t really have a choice but to try; it’s our moral obligation.

When someone or something you love is in trouble, you don’t have any choice but to do your utmost to help, and that’s what we must do for our planet. Society is waking up to that reality, and for me, that makes the weeks of hard campaigning worth it, to see all sorts of people marching along the streets of Glasgow today validates all of our efforts, it gives me hope that we’re going to succeed. This is a fight we can’t afford to lose.