<
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/apr/22/australias-student-strikers-for-climate-believed-they-could-change-their-future-where-are-they-now>
"On a stinking hot November day, seven years ago, Grace Vegesana and a handful
of other young climate activists set up a small stage in a large square in
Sydney’s CBD – and waited. Inspired by the first school striker for climate,
Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, the high school students decided to organise
their own rally.
Vegesana expected a hundred people to show up. Five thousand came. “It was
like, oh my God, we’ve unleashed some kind of beast, people want more,” she
recalls. In the months afterwards crowds doubled and then tripled.
A year later, the devastation of Australia’s black summer bushfires collided
with a conservative government that was perceived to be failing to act. It was,
as Vegesana says, “a tinderbox of fury”, which on 20 September 2019 was set
alight: An estimated 300,000 people attended hundreds of rallies across
Australia in what were probably the largest public demonstrations since the
marches against the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
“It was this exhilarating moment of feeling so swept up in social change, of
feeling undefeatable,” says Vegesana, now the director of the Australian Youth
Climate Coalition, which helps coordinate climate groups across the country.
At the time, organisers saw that day as a launchpad to even larger rallies.
Activists hoped to see the biggest protests in the country’s history. Instead,
it was the movement’s peak, to date.
Inside AYCC’s office in Sydney, photos of those strikes hang as a reminder of
unrealised potential. A Lowy Institute poll found concern over the climate
crisis among Australians aged 18-29 peaked in 2019, falling eight percentage
points by last year. The movement that thousands of young people had hoped
might change their future has, on the face of it, petered out.
So, where did the momentum go?"
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
