Trinity Academy pupil Sandy Boyd is one of the leading lights behind today’s Edinburgh Youth Climate Strike, which is expected to attract around 10,000 people onto the capital’s streets to demand action on climate change.
Sandy met councillors at the City Chambers yesterday to explain the reasons for the youth action and to encouraged the ‘auld yins’ to follow the lead of young people across the globe.
School strike actions will take place in 150 countries today and are the latest – and likely to be the biggest so far – in a series of actions first initiated by Swedish schoolgirl Greta Thunberg last year.
Young people will be central to the development of plans to make Edinburgh carbon neutral by 2030, senior councillors have pledged.
Depute Leader (and former youth worker) Cammy Day and SNP Councillor Ellie Bird, who is Edinburgh’s ‘young people’s tsar’, are joint leaders of the city council during the absence of council leader Cllr Adam McVey. The Forth councillors invited Sandy to meet them in the City Chambers yesterday.In a ‘positive and productive’ discussion, they agreed that young people would be at the core of the city’s climate change strategy.Cllr Day said: “It was really encouraging to meet Sandy today and we definitely see this as the start of a meaningful dialogue to ensure that young people and their ideas are absolutely at the heart of our plans for a carbon neutral city by 2030.“He shared a number of very useful ideas on how we can best communicate with our younger citizens, such as organising meetings outwith school hours and avoiding rigid agendas in favour of inviting participants to set the themes and discussion topics themselves.”Cllr Bird said: “We’re working with partners to pull together plans for a major climate conference in Edinburgh in early 2020 and at our meeting today we committed to engage fully with Sandy and his peers so that they’re integral to this event. “We’re looking forward to many more opportunities to hear directly from and work closely with the young people of this city. Their voices are critical to any debate about the future of the planet.”The Forth councillors are among a number of city councillors who plan to attend today’s march in the city centre.Cllr Day added: “I think we and all our partners, including Police Scotland, fully support the right of residents of all ages to make their voices heard peacefully.I’m looking forward to a positive, safe and good-natured event that will go down in our city’s history books for all the right reasons.”Cllr Bird added: “Sandy and his group are to be congratulated for everything they’re doing to get this vital issue high up on the news agenda and I wish them all the best for a great turnout.”
