WE ARE currently organising local protests as part of the international youthstrike4climate movement to promote change, community involvement, awareness and most importantly, drastic and immediate action on climate change.

The youthstrike4climate movement is our generation’s way of show the Government how important this issue is and the protests that we carry out are our way of having our voices heard about the biggest threat to our future.

Despite the recent declaration of a climate emergency across multiple councils in the UK, including Kendal Town Council, the recent approval of the proposed coal mine in West Cumbria outlines the fact that these promises of a greener future are empty without direct and immediate action to combat the senseless destruction of our planet.

According to the IPCC we now have approximately 11 years left to reduce emissions by 50 per cent so that warming of more than 1.5° C can be prevented, meaning that we have very limited time to drastically reduce our environmental impact to protect countless ecosystems around the world from being destroyed, with coral reefs in particular facing almost complete eradication in the event of a 2° C+ rise in global temperatures.

Climate change is happening now, as is evident in the extreme fluctuations we have seen in our weather in recent years. Storm Desmond devastated the South Lakes, with hundreds of people made homeless and several major transport routes put out of action, the effects of which are still being felt today.

If our systematic destruction of the natural world doesn’t change now, these natural disasters will only become more frequent and intense. We need governments to make pledges supporting immediate action to reduce the use of fossil fuels, single use plastic and to implement taxes on other highly damaging industries like fast fashion.

As an individual, climate change may seem like an impossible issue to combat. However, small individual actions carried out en mass can make a huge difference. Say, for example, if everyone reading this article refused to buy any unnecessary plastic on their next trip to the local supermarket, it would greatly increase pressure to remove needless plastic and create a real change in supermarkets’ attitudes.

Future generations will look back on this moment in time and look at what we did to prevent a climate catastrophe; it’s up to us to make a difference now so they have a clean and safe world to live in.

Jonah Thom and Iona Nelson-Yeats

Kendal youth climate protest coordinators