HK Students To Join Strike Over Climate Change

Students in Hong Kong are set to join their peers from around the world next month by walking out of schools and joining a strike to demand urgent action on climate change.

Tens of thousands of students have taken part in the grassroots movement, inspired by a Swedish teenager who organised the first school strike for climate action outside her country's parliament last year.

The organisers of the Hong Kong protest, secondary school students Elisa Hirn, Zara Campion, and Emily Tarr, are calling on other students to join them on the morning of Friday, March 15, when they would ordinarily be in school.

They have already in touch with the police and hoped to get permission for the planned protest in a day or two.

Other details were still being sketched out, but the idea of a school strike for climate action was influenced by the example of Swedish teen Greta Thunberg, who demanded measures from her own government.

Elisa Hirn said such a protest can't happen outside school hours. “The whole point of it is that it’s a student-led initiative. And it is a strike from school, because we feel like it’s the only way we’ll be heard,” she said.

“And if we do it on the weekend, it might not have as much impact. And, also, the 15th of March is the global day for the strike where hundreds of cities are participating,” she added.

Zara Campion said students are taught about carbon cycles, climate change and what is happening in the world – but there's never any action. She said Hong Kong is falling behind other cities in addressing this particular crisis.

“Doing it on a school day is just acting upon what we’re being taught at school,” she said.

They're hopeful that students will unite behind the issue and that Hong Kong and the government will hear what they say and do more than what they currently do, being as time is running out.