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