Why Are We Doing This?

Greta Thunberg has created an opportunity to more actively engage with children about climate change at a collective level.

Young Climate Warriors aims to provide a platform to engage with children about climate change, to empower them to become agents of change within their homes, and to provide an opportunity to harness the power of collective action to respond to climate change and cut carbon emissions.

Have you been worrying about Climate Change? Have you been reading just too many articles in the press to be able to keep ignoring it - thinking someone else will sort it out? Thinking...surely that’s the government's job, or the role of businesses. Well the fact is that we all need to be pulling together, we are running out of time, we all need to do our bit, starting now. Our carbon emissions need to be cut…dramatically and quickly.

‘The Garden of Eden is no more. We have changed the world so much that scientists say we are now in a new geological age – The Anthropocene – The Age of Humans. It is tempting and understanding to ignore the evidence and carry on as usual or be filled with doom and gloom. But there is also vast potential for what we might do. We need to move beyond guilt or blame and get on with the practical tasks at hand’. David Attenborough, Davos, January 2019.

'Following Greta Thunberg’s speech at Davos, I felt driven to provide a platform to enable and empower all children to respond to the issue of climate change, especially younger children who are less likely to strike.' Katrina Judge, Founder, Young Climate Warriors.

The power of ‘striking’ for an issue is mainly in the collective action – many people pulling together to shout about the same thing. Young Climate Warriors aims to harness this collective power by getting children to all undertake the SAME ‘challenge’ in the SAME week, and thereby as part of a team be able to achieve big things.

‘You are never too small to make a difference – imagine what we could all do together if we really wanted to’. ‘We must take action into our own hands, starting today’. Greta Thunberg, age 15, United Nations Climate Conference, December 2018.

The world’s leading climate scientists (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - IPCC) have warned we only have a dozen years to ensure that global warming is kept to a maximum of 1.5C, beyond which even half a degree will significantly worsen the risks of drought, floods, extreme heat and poverty for hundreds of millions of people.

In order to stop warming beyond 1.5C emissions from rich nations such as the UK must be slashed to ‘net zero', the point at which emissions are effectively cut by 100%, within 6 - 12 years. This is because global emissions need to be cut by at least 45% by 2030. The UK as an already developed nation therefore needs to cut our emissions faster than that to allow time for some of the less developed nations to build some of the infrastructure we take for granted - like hospitals, electricity networks, water treatment systems.