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RandomFactor writes:

Across the world Friday, students skipped class to protest their governments failure to take sufficient measures to curb climate change.

It all started with 16 year old Greta Thunberg of Sweden:

who began holding solitary demonstrations outside the Swedish parliament last year. Since then, the weekly protests have snowballed from a handful of cities to hundreds, fueled by dramatic headlines about the impact of climate change during the students' lifetime.

Thunberg has been nominated for a Nobel peace prize for her efforts.

The protestors are calling for a list of anti-climate change actions and solutions including:

Our Demands

• Green New Deal
• A halt in any and all fossil fuel infrastructure projects
• All decisions made by the government be based on the best-available and most-current scientific research.
• Declaring a National Emergency on Climate Change
• Compulsory comprehensive education on climate change and its impacts throughout grades K-8
• Preserving our public lands and wildlife
• Keeping our water supply clean

Our Solutions

• The extraction of Greenhouse Gases from the atmosphere
• Emission standards and benchmarks
• Changing the agriculture industry
• Using renewable energy and building renewable energy infrastructure
• Stopping the unsustainable and dangerous process of fracking
• Stop mountaintop removal/mining

In a speech Friday outside the United Nations HQ in New York, Alexandria Villasenor, one of the founders of Youth Climate Strike U.S. said:

world leaders weren't listening. "Our world leaders are the ones acting like children," she said. "They are the ones having tantrums, arguing with each other and refusing to take responsibility for their actions while the planet burns."

At one of these planned protests a year or two back, permission forms were sent home in advance so kids could get parental permission to participate in skipping school and protesting. Kids who didn't participate were taunted and harassed by the other kids.

How does your school treat such events?

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