‘Climate strikes are back because we have so much left to fight for’

The past few years have been monumental for the environmental movement.

In 2018, Extinction Rebellion was founded and Greta Thunberg started striking from her school and sitting outside the Swedish parliament every Friday to demand climate action.

This kickstarted the rapid shift of environmentalism from an ideology mainly associated with hippies into a mainstream political idea.

From February 2019 to the beginning of the pandemic, towns and cities across the UK saw regular climate strikes occurring every month or two, often with speeches, marches, and die-ins.

Bristol was no exception to this, being a stronghold of climate activism, often holding some of the most attended climate strikes in the UK with thousands of attendees.

Due to the pandemic, the climate strikes in our city have been halted for many months. In fact, it was the 30,000-strong march and rally featuring Greta herself in February 2020 that we last mobilised, only two weeks after the one-year anniversary of our first strike.

Next to no action has been taken by the government or council since then to tackle the climate and ecological crisis, let alone achieve climate justice.

HS2 is still going ahead, the UK government still subsidises fossil fuels and the banks still finance fossil fuel extraction.

Many parts of Bristol still do not have clean and legal air, and the fight against the expansion of Bristol Airport is still ongoing.

The latest IPCC report shows without a doubt that human activity is responsible for climate change, yet our leaders are failing to take action.

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Read more: Clean air zone delayed until summer 2022

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Young people are in a unique place as a generation to fight the climate crisis. A recent study by Bath University found that 60 per cent of young people approached said they felt very worried or extremely worried, with over 45 per cent of them saying feelings about the climate affected their daily lives.

Furthermore, the youth of the world have never known a stable climate. We are the first generation who have had to live with the climate and ecological crisis growing up, knowing that unless urgent and radical action is taken soon it may very well destroy our futures.

And yet we live in western Europe, in one of the richest countries in the world, where the previous generations have created this crisis, our governments have created systemic inequality across the world, and where our corporations have profited from fossil fuel extraction and have covered up the truth about climate change for decades.

The Global South has historically suffered at the hands of the Global North, and this situation is no exception: the countries that have already been experiencing the effects of this crisis for many years are not the ones that have caused it.

Bristol Youth Strike 4 Climate protesters on Park Street – photo: Archie Richards

We are demanding that local authorities take immediate action to save the 300 people from air pollution each year in Bristol.

We are continuing the struggle against the expansion of Bristol Airport that we have been campaigning against for more than two years.

We are standing in solidarity with the Global South.

We are standing up for climate, social, and racial justice to ensure any response to climate change addresses systemic inequality.

We are standing up against oppression and for liberation of all people.

We are demanding the the governments of the world take immediate action to save our futures and our planet.

The current way of treating the environment as an afterthought and governments bending to the will of fossil fuel corporations needs to end. The climate strikes are back on College Green from 11am on Friday because we have so much left to fight for.

Torin Menzies is a 16-year-old activist in Bristol Youth Strike 4 Climate and a pupil at QEH School

Main photo: Archie Richards

Read more: Hope and anger at Bristol’s first general climate strike

Watch the most recent Bristol24/7 Presents event: how Bristol can become the first net-zero city