Thousands of schoolchildren across Australia are expected to strike for climate action this Friday, with the backing of “climate doctors” who are said to have penned a special absentee note for the occasion.
Two Australian climate scientists have written a Climate Doctor’s Certificate that students can use when they put down their pens, shut their laptops and leave class in droves later this week. The interactive letter is signed by Prof David Karoly from the University of Melbourne and Dr Nick Abel from ANU. It states the student is “unfit [for school] due to a major climate health concern”, noting their “elevated stress” and “feelings of despair” on seeing the impacts of climate change.
“It is my recommendation that they take a sick day to protest for a sick planet,” the letter concludes.
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One of the students taking advantage of the letter is 16-year-old Min Park who was first introduced to the impacts of climate change in 2019 when she watched the first School Strike 4 Climate rallies take place via the news. Now a year 10 student, four years later, she is helping lead Friday’s strike.
“We’re inching towards the point of no return and the government’s kind of watching the Earth dying and still not doing anything,” Park was quoted as saying. “I was sick of not being able to do anything, the lack of actions [by] the government and … the government not being held accountable and us not being taken seriously because we’re young people.
“I wanted to have my voice heard.”
Karoly said that he engaged in demonstrations against the Vietnam war in the 1970s when he was in high school, and sees the climate strikes “as a similar battle”.
“It is a battle against the sorts of interest that want to promote ongoing burning of fossil fuels and release of greenhouse gases, which is being supported by the Australian government, and I think it’s really important that the students should understand that the battle to limit climate change is a really important battle to provide them with a better environment and a better climate in the future.”
Story was adapted from the Guardian.
