Young climate justice activists call for action
i’m a friday’s the future activist in
belfast
which means we strike weekly for the
climate at balfour city hall
more locally for the movement this means
campaigning for things such as
raising awareness of our illegal levels
of air pollution in belfast
and one in 24 people in belfast die
every single year from our air pollution
this means that we
have the second highest air pollution
rates in the uk
which is ridiculous another issue that
this will affect us is sea level rise
and as you know we are an island nation
so this is a particular issue that will
affect us
most places such as belfast dairy oma
antrim nuri
carrick will all be uninhabitable by
2050
in 2050 i will be 48 years old which
just goes to show that this
is not a problem for future generations
this is a problem
for my generation for our generation
this is something that we need to be
working on now and
isn’t something that we can wait and we
can deliberate and we can debate
the science is already there the
solutions are already there
we just need to enact them and make sure
that our politicians are informed when
they’re making these decisions
an example of this decision would be a
climate act we really really need a
climate act
in northern ireland we have no climate
laws whatsoever
and we’re the only country in the uk
that is in this position
we need to be changing and we need to be
changing quick
our emissions need to be at zero
well well well before 2030 we should be
aiming for
2025 and if we can get there sooner then
we should count it as a win as well as
science
we also need to be taking into
consideration climate justice
our climate actually needs to be
completely intersectional
and a large proportion of the people
living in belfast are working class
and so the climate crisis will
disproportionately affect them
and in order to combat this we need a
just
transition which means that you convert
jobs
in polluting industries and retrain
people into
clean industries and so you don’t just
leave people behind
in terms of young people yes um
me and some friends do skip school every
friday
but we’re not just doing it to skip
school we would have stopped a long time
ago if that was the case
next week will be week 58 in a row of us
um school striking for the climate and
we’re doing this to raise awareness to
our politicians and to nr assembly
and specifically to edwin puts because
we need to raise awareness of the
climate crisis
and a lot of us are under 18 which means
that we
cannot vote in the decisions that will
affect our future and so we need to
convince the adults voting on our behalf
to keep
our future and our present in mind and
because we’re the ones who have to
live with the consequences of the
decisions being made today
and we have to remember that individual
change
is good every little helps however
and it is almost negligible compared to
systematic change
71 of global emissions come from just
100 companies
and and so people telling you to just
switch
off lights and eat less meat that’s just
green washing
um it’s not harmful to do those things
um
but if the people in par
and the richest one percent keep doing
what they’re doing then
our individual isolated actions mean
nothing
i am a student youth activist
and i work mostly with extinction
rebellion northern ireland as a young
person i think it’s
really important to advocate for
environmental justice because
it is literally
my entire life it is my entire
generation
that are going to feel the brutal force
the ever-increasing destruction
associated
um with climate change and caused by
climate change
so there it there has been a significant
impact on the mental health of young
people because of climate change
and it’s not just sort of laughable oh
existential dread it’s genuine
eco-anxiety it’s been given a name
and yeah i mean why is that surprising
that
the climate crisis is affecting young
people’s mental health this is
literally our features uh being taken
away from us right
right in front of our eyes and it’s
terrifying it’s scary
uh i think a lot of people are drawn to
activism
for the environment because of this fear
it’s not because
we want to be rowdy we want to cause
disruption
it’s because we’re scared we’re
genuinely terrified
the measures being taken to tackle
climate change are not adequate
they’re not consistent and most of the
time when legislation is brought in
it’s it’s not follow through with it’s
it’s not taken seriously
um this needs to be
at the forefront of our social mindset
this is an important future altering
issue and if we don’t take action now
it’s just going to get worse we’ve seen
governments all over the world act on
the science act on the facts
and put in place uh
measures to keep people safe to save
people’s lives
with covid19 but we haven’t seen the
same level of dedication or urgency when
it’s come to the climate crisis
despite the fact that there are decades
worth
of research done showing that this is a
serious threat to
humanity and to all life on this planet
on an individual level
the most effective way that you can
actually try and personally bring about
any element of change is to contact your
local political representatives
get involved in a group where you can
help
but ultimately it is systematic change
that
needs to be implemented to try and
actually mitigate the effects of climate
change
we need the large polluting industries
to
pick up their pieces and clean up their
act because they’re the main
contributors
to our global emissions my call to
action
is to get northern ireland to announce
a climate act we are the only part of
the uk
that doesn’t have one and it shows the
absolute ignorance and abandonment of
this really
important issue um northern ireland does
not take the climate prices seriously
and does not deliver adequate measures
or any real measures to be honest to try
and mitigate the effects of climate
change and global warming
this is not an opinion or something you
can debate on the climate crisis is
scientific fact
so our main challenge is getting an
assembly to treat the crisis like a
crisis
to listen to the science and then act
accordingly on that science