On 17 June, a group of students from several high schools in the Mountains gathered at Lyttleton Stores Co-op to discuss Greta Thunberg’s book “The Climate Book”. At the conclusion, each school left with a copy of the book for their library, donated by Lyttleton Stores from BMCC grant funds.

While the material being discussed was very serious, it was nonetheless an uplifting and lively event. It commenced with an acknowledgement of country, and a wonderful musical performance by Tessa and Rory McKay. Tessa went on to share projects by the Environment Committee at Katoomba High, which focuses on Animal Welfare, and described the indigenous area that the school has created, where events such as aboriginal dances take place.

We then heard from other groups about what is happening at their schools to address the causes and impacts of climate change. Springwood High, for example, has developed a multi-bin approach for addressing the important issue of waste, and has been active in addressing how overheating caused by climate change is impacting learning. Korowal School has an emphasis on eliminating plastics!

Students from different schools came together for an animated brainstorm. They identified major issues brought about by the current, unprecedented, rapid rate of climate change, including drought, bushfires, floods, and the melting of the ice caps leading to rising sea levels and release of carbon dioxide and pollutants. These changes all cause destruction of land, culture and wildlife habitat. The impacts of global industrialisation were also discussed, with a focus on fast fashion, plastic and sustainable agriculture. Then the ever-present issue of climate denial was raised, not only among people in the community, but as seen in the lack of action by politicians.

This wasn’t just an opportunity to illuminate the challenges our environment, and future, are facing. A range of solutions were also initiated by the students, including:

Environmental, such as acknowledgement that we are part of the ecosystem and can’t continue manipulating it; sustainable agriculture and encouraging buying seasonal foods; labelling of GM foods; eco packaging and banning of single use plastics; zero waste lifestyles.
Reducing emissions by stopping fossil fuel usage and funding those who do; emissions free energy; better public transport; EVs and sustainable building design eg. natural light and green roofs.
Systemic change including, making products of higher quality that are repairable, tighter environmental laws for industry and more education of the public.

These students are inspiring in their passion and in the nuanced and insightful ideas they raised - ideas which are reflected in detail in Greta’s book with evidence to support them. While it might be easy to take comfort from the fact that young people like this are actively looking for ways to safeguard our future, the question now becomes, are we going to step up to support them, and take our role in engineering solutions to problems that we created, and they will have to live with? The book is available at local bookstores.

Keeping Up with the Youth on Climate?