All across the country and the wider world today, young people in schools of all ages are downing their pencils and tablets and marching to demand firm action to prevent climate change.
Traffic at a standstill as our #YouthStrike4Climate
Power to young people…. young people have the power.#ClimateStrike #schoolstrike4climate pic.twitter.com/y4SKbnfmBd— Little Ninja UK (@LittleNinjaUK) February 15, 2019
Kids. They're going to do it for us and they're not messing around.#ClimateStrike pic.twitter.com/FUsK9LNXgr
— Zack Polanski (@ZackPolanski) February 15, 2019
Long term environmental campaigner George Monbiot said it was the most inspiring environmental action he had ever seen.
The #ClimateStrike now spreading around the world is the most hopeful thing I've seen in 30 years of campaigning.#YouthForClimate #FridaysForFuture #schoolstrike4climate
— George Monbiot (@GeorgeMonbiot) February 15, 2019
Schools in Cardiff have been getting involved too.
Radnor Primary in Canton was one of few primary schools to take part- mostly it was a secondary affair. Good on you, Radnor!
Diolch to @SkyNews for publicising our efforts ahead of Friday’s climate strike on their Sunrise program this morning. #FridaysForFuture @GretaThunberg @Strike4Youth pic.twitter.com/b1m6kflz9w
— Radnor Primary (@RadnorCanton) February 13, 2019
The BBC reports that a whole load of young people descended on the Senedd in Cardiff Bay- near Sprout HQ, actually, but I guess I wasn’t here early enough!
You can see all the protests all around the world on this map.
This follows a recent trend of young people becoming even more engaged with environmental activism than ever before. One school in England got year 6 pupils to act as PCSOs and place fake parking tickets on the windscreens of cars idling their engines outside the school gate.
In Russia (of course it’s Russia) they’ve been taking it one step further, with a Youtube channel emerging showing videos of Russian teenagers preventing drivers from driving onto pavements, explaining to the drivers that they are breaking the law, and putting stickers on their windscreens. Granted, this one doesn’t actually have much to do with climate change, but I got sucked into watching these videos for hours the other day- so now you can too.
The Sprout itself had an environmental campaign last year, No Mor Plastic, in conjunction with the Welsh National Museum.
You can follow the climate strike on BBC News and on Twitter.