On 25 September 2020, young people will once again demonstrate alongside many other countries to demand more action on the climate crisis, in a protest organised by Scottish Youth Climate Strike (SYCS).
In Edinburgh they will gather in front of The Scottish Parliament at 11am for a socially distanced protest.
There will be no physical protests at other normal school strike locations – Glasgow and Aberdeen -as they are currently under increased coronavirus restrictions. Instead, people from these cities are encouraged to take part in online actions, such as taking a photo with a sign and posting it on social media.
Before the Covid-19 pandemic, over 40,000 people took to the streets across Scotland on September 20th 2019. In Edinburgh there was a sea of protesters who walked from The Meadows to Holyrood down The Royal Mile. As physical protesting became unsafe this year, the strikers switched to digital striking and other online actions.
The strikers will make two main demands at this protest:
1.Kick-start a programme of public green job creation.
To help safeguard our future, the Government must invest in green infrastructure projects such as energy efficiency, making transport sustainable and heating homes with renewables.
2.No public money to fossil fuel developments.
The Government must not give public money to fossil fuel developments – including false solutions such as Carbon Capture and Storage and Hydrogen derived from fossil fuels. They must set a timetable for phasing out of fossil fuels and create a Just Transition plan for workers affected by these changes.
Cerys Gough, 17, from Langholm said:“Every crisis must be treated as a crisis, and as the coronavirus pandemic has taken over our world we cannot ignore the climate emergency. We are still actively destroying our earth and governments have shown they can take decisive action on a health crisis, so why not the climate crisis?”
Holly Gillibrand, 15, from Fort William said: “The COVID19 crisis can’t be separated from the climate crisis as health crises are made far worse as a result of climate change. Smoke from increasingly bad wildfires is harming people’s lungs making them more susceptible to illness, particularly respiratory ones like coronavirus.
75% of all emerging infectious diseases are zoonotic, which means they are passed from animals to humans. As long as we continue encroaching into natural habitats, we will keep exposing ourselves to diseases like coronavirus. The climate and ecological crisis is a health crisis.”
Dylan Hamilton, 16, from West Lothian said: “We have around 8 years left of our global carbon budget, to stay below a 1.5°C increase in global temperature from pre-industrial levels. That is completely unacceptable and a failure from governments all around the world. We need drastic action and we cannot wait and focus on our education while watching the world burn around us.”
To ensure these protests do not put people at risk from coronavirus, precautions will include wearing a mask, staying two metres away from others at all times and using the contact tracing app. There will be organisers with SYCS encouraging all participants, unless they are medically exempt, to follow these guidelines throughout the protests.
If the risk of spreading the virus becomes too high to hold physical demonstrations, the organisers are prepared to cancel the strikes.
Founding Editor of The Edinburgh Reporter.
Edinburgh-born multimedia journalist and iPhoneographer.
