Occasionally, school boards do more than manage teachers, students, curricula and buildings. Occasionally, they can be both bold and visionary. Such is the case with the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board (HWDSB) when it decided to endorse two days of student-organized climate action. The first is Thursday . The second is Earth Day on April 24. As far as I know, the HWDSB is the only board in the country to support such an empowering student initiative.
During lunch hour on these dates, close to 14,000 students from all 13 public high schools have the option to join a 15- to 20-minute climate rally outdoors on school property. There will be advance announcements and planning meetings. There will be student speeches, chants and signs. There will be an opportunity for students to visually and vocally express their deep angst regarding climate change. Students will teach each other about this most existential of global crises. Hopefully, they will also raise public awareness and guilt adults into further action.
This certainly includes personal steps like better home insulation, installing heat pumps and eating more of a plant-based diet. More importantly, further action includes putting massive and sustained pressure on our elected leaders to bring about system-wide changes.
Among other things, we need to put an immediate and progressive cap on fossil fuel emissions. We need to stop the obscene subsidies that enable fossil fuel companies to dig up even more planet-killing resources. We need to recognize carbon capture and storage remains a very expensive and distant option that will not help us in time to meet our 2030 climate pledges. We need to ban the advertising of vehicles powered by combustion engines. The list goes on.
The worst thing we can do about climate change is to not talk about it. When it lingers in the back of our minds, we do nothing beyond hoping “someone else” will attend to it. When it lingers in the back of our minds, it morphs into a conspiracy of silence where deadly inaction is bound to follow … we keep on burning more and more fossil fuels, and matters continue to get worse and worse.
There is ever-increasing evidence about the enormous psychological costs of this existential crisis on young people who are silently fretting about their future. Ignoring the elephant in the room simply does not cut it.
Jordyn Boyer is an outstanding Grade 12 student at Westmount Secondary School in Hamilton. She is also a dedicated environmental activist, tirelessly organizing Fridays for Future climate strikes at city hall.
Jordyn’s thoughts on climate change: “My passion for the environment and climate justice stems from a deep love of the natural world, and knowing that if I don’t act, it will soon be gone. It hurts my heart to see my little sister growing up in this increasingly threatened world, already so different from the one in which I thrived as a child.”
Showing up, speaking up and acting up really matter— for Jordyn as well as for so many other young people. Let’s welcome this innovative HWDSB initiative. Let’s support our children and grandchildren on these days of student climate action. We owe it to them to add our voices: passionately, loudly and persistently. Before it’s too late.
Grant Linney lives in Dundas. Since being trained by Al Gore in 2010, he has delivered more than 900 presentations on climate change to a wide variety of audiences. He can be reached at climategrant@gmail.com.