Contributing Writer Nora Gross, ’23
JDHS’s Environmental Club organized their own climate change strike on Friday, September 27th from 10:00 to 10:30am. One of the organizers, junior Emily Ninestein, said, “We wanted to provide an opportunity for people at JD to do that without having to be transported off campus.” The strike gained lots of publicity by students sharing it around their social media. In Ninestein’s opinion, it was a success and had lots of people there who supported this very important cause. The organizers lead a very inspirational protest and spoke about their own opinions on the issue. They even played Greta Thunberg’s UN speech on a speaker for the group. Their protest was powerful and they hope it will spark some change in the Jamesville-DeWitt community.
The previous Friday a climate strike was held in downtown Syracuse by local politicians. It was difficult for students to attend given that it was a school day. However, seniors Wynnie Gross and Katie McPeak were able to make it. “It was a good way of standing up for what I believe in,” said Gross. The strike downtown allowed local activists to express their beliefs and other opinions. Even senior Sophie Clinton spoke. One speaker performed a rap about climate change and his disappointment in the current actions being taken.
“It’s important that people our age start to be aware of it because we’ll be making decisions soon,” said freshman Nicki Meskos. The next generation of leaders have been encouraged by other leaders to start standing up for the environment, strikes being one of the ways they can achieve this. Lots of students expressed that they actually believed in climate change and wanted to see a difference in our current leaders actions.
“A lot of people who are in decision making and our government right now are not exactly doing everything that they could be doing,” said freshman Sophie Commandeur. In fact, President Trump, who has expressed that he doesn’t believe in climate change, backed out of the Paris Agreement, an agreement within some countries that helps fight against climate change and tries to limit the amount of change in temperature of the Earth by two degrees celsius. This issue cannot be solved by one agreement.
Greta Thunberg, a climate change activist from Sweden, has stirred up a lot of publicity concerning climate change. Thunberg has created #FridaysForFuture, where every Friday students around the globe walkout in protest against the lack of action by our world leaders. Climate change has been an issue for many years but scientists are now discovering that in a matter of years, or even months, irreversible damage will affect the rest of our lives.