Climate change has long been a topic I have been thinking about a lot, especially during the last year as Greta Thunberg’s movement, Fridays for Future, became prominent in western countries and later throughout the world. Spending time in nature is one of my favorite pastimes and as such, preserving the environment is one of my top priorities. As science shows, the world will change considerably in the future due to climate change, and I find it remarkable and sad that this knowledge is not taken seriously by society in general. I wonder why people take other scientific knowledge for granted but don’t consider concepts such as climate change as equally valid. Why do we take medicine that was scientifically proven to be effective and don’t think about it, but we don’t do anything against a threat that will change all of our lives and will cause extinctions of many species and much more dire consequences. It was important to me to address climate change, since it is a key issue of global importance.

I do quite a lot privately to minimize my impact on the climate. As my family lives in Europe and we travel a lot, we fly regularly, which is one of the worst methods of transport in terms of greenhouse gas emissions. Furthermore, I and my father cycle to school/ work every day, which makes a great impact comparing to using a car to go everywhere. I also pay a lot of attention on smaller things such as turning of lights and using as little single use plastics as possible, while I don’t use A/C at all at home. These frustrating thoughts made me think that I must act in some way. I had the idea with two of my classmates, Rashmi and Disara. Unfortunately, the Easter Sunday terrorist attacks  put a stop to our thoughts as security tightened significantly. However, this changed as after the summer break, security was back to normal, we took up the idea again together with students from grade 11, Alex, Emily and Talia. We thought Thunberg’s call for climate actions demonstrations during the week of UN talks would be a great time to raise awareness and get the school community to change their lifestyle in order to reduce our impact to global warming.

The planning for the day we would do the rally, which we chose to be Friday September 27, was very extensive and time-consuming. We spent may break times going through what we should do, and after we had a rough plan, we spent time making posters, writing speeches and planning the event, often staying longer after school. This was problematic as I had several assignments, but I really believe that as this is about our future, it is at least equally as important as school, which is also why I chanted “What is the use of getting an education for a future that might not be there” on the event day.

The morning started at 7:00, with a group of us getting our posters and standing at the school entrance. We shouted out our slogans and told the students to meet at the auditorium at 12:00 for an assembly on climate change. This was quite powerful I believe as we had good posters and were really showing our fellow students how important this topic is for us and why it must be important for the others as well. Following this, we took the posters and walked around the school corridors, continuing our chanting of slogans. We had many students follow us and take part in the rally, and this was an especially effective way to publicize what we were doing.

At noon, all secondary students left class and went to the auditorium, as we had ordered them to do in the morning and previously via email. The assembly we held was started by a short speech by me in which I informed everyone why we met and the importance of such an event. After the introduction we showed the video of Greta Thunberg speaking in front of the UN, followed by an activity organized by Joshua Jackson, in which each student wrote his/ her thought on what should be done to tackle climate change in Sri Lanka. The last main part was informing the audience of a pledge we had written, what it included and why it is important for the students to stick to it if they chose to sign it. The pledge included things such as a carbon tax for school event flights, turning on A/Cs only after 9:00, using little single use plastics, etc. In the end, I did a brief conclusion, which was the end of that day’s climate action and awareness event.

This event was important for me in several ways. First of all and most importantly, I finally engaged myself in climate change, a topic that is of huge significance to me, and to the world as a whole since it is a defining topic of our time. In addition, this was an opportunity to plan an event without adult help and to hold an assembly on a topic I really find crucial. However, I want this to be only the start of our community becoming more sustainable, and I don’t want to stop informing and taking action until climate change is reduced.