Humanity has ten years left to prevent the worst of climate change, according to the United Nations. For the past five years, the debate about a federal bill regarding climate change has been discussed but never implemented. Now the youth of America has taken climate change into their own hands.

Here in the Bay Area, plans such as the Climate Action Plan, a plan to lower carbon emissions, are in the process of being implemented to fight the negative effects of climate change. Other organizations such as the Sunrise Movement provide support and help to youth to make a difference in our communities and also helped youth in Bay Area plan a climate change march.

Students from Saint Francais organized a climate change march that was scheduled to start at 1:30 pm on May 3rd (meet in sj). The attendees included various students from around the Bay Area, and met in San Jose.There were a total of fifty people who attended the march, with five to ten of the attendees from HHS. They attended the march in hopes of receiving the attention of government officials, to make changes surrounding the amount of carbon emissions and applying the solutions proposed to society.

“We all marched down to city hall and called out to Diane Buchanan to make policy changes so we can lower our carbon footprint in the Bay Area,” junior Annabelle Law, a HHS student who attended the march said. “We students have the voice to make change and make our policy makers to make a change for the better.”  

Different solutions such as limiting fossil fuel use, to prevent the worst of climate change have already been determined been by many organizations such as NASA, GreenAmerica but implicating these changes is difficult.

“We need to get to a point where we can reduce our fossil fuels more,” one of the organizers of the march Jamie Minden said. She has been involved with environmental activism for two years. Minden actively attends council meetings, talks to representatives and speaks at different high schools about climate change.

“We need to get to the point where we can survive in twenty years,” Minden said. “By the time we decide on the green new deal we [only] will have ten years to make these changes, and that’s not a lot of time.”

There are many different ways to advocate for a climate change bill to help reduce carbon emissions and prevent climate change’s worst outcomes for future generations.

“The whole aspect of us going on this march while school was in session was to say…why should we learn for the future if we’re not going to have one.” Law said.