Hawkesbury students to strike for policy action on climate change

The Colo High School and Bede Polding College students, along with a group from Katoomba High, will catch public transport to the CBD to join students from schools around Sydney for the strike.

The School Strike 4 Climate Action website claimed tens of thousands of students from around the world would be participating in strikes.

William Potter (17), leader of the Go MAD Colo Student Action Group environmental initiative, said the strike would raise his generation’s concerns relating to climate change and the impact it poses on their futures.

“To us, the Climate Crisis is the single-most important cause of our generation, as every one of our future hopes and dreams hangs in the balance of the decisions made today. We do not want to suffer in the future knowing that we knew [about climate change], and did nothing,” William said.

“The IPCC states that we, as a common humanity, have 12 years to drop fossil fuels in order to maintain a 1.5 degree world - a liveable world.

“In light of recent events including record floods up North, extreme bushfires down South, extensive droughts out West and a dying Great Barrier Reef on our coast - we know the effects of climate change are here, and we know the solutions too. Yet, our government still wants to build huge coal mines like Adani's.”

William said he and eleven other students representing the three schools were meeting with Federal Member for Macquarie, Susan Templeman MP, this week, in the hopes it will help her and her party “better represent” the students’ “concerns regarding the Climate Crisis in Parliament, if she is to get re-elected”.

“We will be sharing ideas for meaningful and effective policy action, and supplying our demands - including Australia become Carbon Neutral by 2030,” William said.

He hopes to secure a similar meeting with local representatives of the Liberal party.

The students will raise numerous demands during the meeting including Declaration of a Climate Emergency, stopping Adani, and no new coal or gas projects.

They will present a range of ideas for policy action including that all new infrastructure requires electric car charging ports, offering subsidies for electric vehicles, banning the sale of non-electric vehicles by 2025, and aiming for 95 per cent of vehicles to be electric by 2030.

Ms Templeman said the students were “rightly concerned” about climate change, as they would be "dealing with the consequences, long after the politicians of today have left the earth.”

“I was delighted to receive an invitation to meet with this group of students and I will be encouraging them to speak out about the issues that will determine their future. I look forward to hearing their views and ideas about how we meet the huge challenges ahead of us,” Ms Templeman said.

“Sadly, we are the only major advanced economy where carbon pollution or greenhouse gases are going up, rather than coming down. In fact, the Government’s own data shows carbon pollution is continuing to rise and will continue to rise all the way to 2030.”

William said the students had the support of their parents, and were encouraging adults to take the day off work and join them in solidarity.