Greta Thunberg has made the call for another national day of global climate action for November 29 – and we’re heeding the call!
Students, environmentalists and workers call on the community in Narrm/Birraranga (Melbourne) to strike for immediate climate action on the 29th of November in solidarity with the global Climate Strike movement.
Young people understand that the world is in the midst of a serious crisis, and nowhere is this more clear than Australia. Bush fire season is already well underway, with devastating fires burning across the country much earlier than usual and torching areas that have not been burned for millions of years. Outback Australia is struggling with a serious drought, made worse by decades of mismanagement and corruption of the Murray-Darling river system. Corporate agribusiness has extracted so much water from the system that entire towns like Walgett, Bourke, Wilcannia and Menindee have been left without safe drinking water for most of this year.
First Nations communities across remote and regional Australia, are already facing the impacts of the climate crisis first and worst. First Nations communities are not only faced with worsening heatwaves and water shortages but also the destruction of their country and communities due to the greed of corruption of big business and fossil fuel extraction. Despite this First Nation communities are leading in the fight for Climate Justice and have all the solutions to the climate crisis – land management practices that have been used regeneratively for over 100,000 years.
And yet, our political system is not only responding too slowly, but politicians and big business want to hugely expand Australia’s fossil fuel industries – bulldozing community needs, Native Title rights and the environment in order to do it, and locking us into exporting coal and gas for another 50 years. Adani is just one of dozens of new fossil fuel projects proposed in this country, such as the many new coal mines being built in NSW and plans to start the incredibly destructive process fracking for gas in the NT.
The global climate strike on the 20th of September showed a glimpse of the movement we need in order to challenge the power of fossil fuels in our economy and our society – hundreds of thousands of young people, backed by mobilisations of ordinary workers, standing with Aboriginal community activists in demanding an end to new coal and gas projects, an urgent transition to renewable energy, and economic justice for communities currently dependent on fossil fuels.
We need to take this further and keep up the momentum. Come along on November 29 and bring your classmates, your workmates, your friends, your family, your teammates at sport – to win climate action, we need everyone.
