Hundreds of thousands of children are striking from school to take to the streets demanding policymakers take the climate crisis seriously. This is an open letter from three striking students in years 7 and 8 in Lancashire, the only area of the UK currently being fracked for shale gas extraction.
An open letter to Lancashire County Council
Dear Mr Grice,
We are writing to you today to speak about climate change.
There are many things that mankind does that is killing our world. Global carbon dioxide emissions from human activity have increased by over 400 percent since 1950. Burning fossil fuels, fracking, deforestation and farming are also some of the leading causes of methane in the atmosphere.
These may seem like little things to some, but the effects of what we are doing are detrimental. Many of our world’s endangered animals live in ecosystems that will be severely affected by global warming and if the planet warms by more than 2 degrees most of these ecosystems will struggle. It is also having serious impacts on the world’s water systems and forests.
“If we destroy creation, creation will destroy us.” This a quote from Pope Francis, who also agrees with our beliefs. The science of climate change is clear and has been declared by the Pope as a moral issue to the Catholic Church. As part of the ‘Global Catholic Climate Movement’ the Pope has urged the 1.2 billion Catholics worldwide to take action against the injustice of climate change and the ecological crisis. In his memorable letter “Laudato Si’” the Pope calls for the population to care for our common home. As part of this movement Catholics are responding to Pope Francis’ call.
This Friday, three of your pupils will be joining the Youth4ClimateStrike in Preston. It is our belief that our society is not doing enough to help save our environment. It is also our belief that there is no point in getting an education when there may not be a future to need one. We will be joining pupils from across the globe in a strike to save our world.
Schools all over Scotland have given permission for their students to join this cause in order to take a stand. The headteachers union is also applauding students who have the courage to stand up and say, ‘Enough is Enough!’.
We urge you to join your fellow headteachers in the support they are giving us and to understand that we need to do this. Last month another strike took place on Friday the 15th of February. These protests are called ‘Fridays for Future’. The aim of us missing a day in education is to force the government into declaring a state of climate emergency, before they destroy our future.
The wellbeing of our environment is plummeting rapidly, we are desperately urging council’s, schools, governments, parents, teachers, communities and organisations to join in with us and say: ‘Yes, we are ruining our world, so let’s do something to save it.’
So, to clarify, this Friday (15 March 2019) we will be missing school in order to strike, campaign and march to save our natural world. We will also be attending Lancashire County Council’s offices to hand in the latest Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change report to their councillors.
We hope you will support us in the journey that we are taking to put a stop to this destruction. This is our entire future we are talking about and there is no Planet B.
Yours sincerely,
Phoebe Stephenson, Year 8
Rhiannon Kelly, Year 8
Paddy Commins-Menzies, Year 7
