OPINION: Missing school to fight for our future is worth it

PHOTO: Davis High students from the Climate Action Club and Environmental Club strike for the climate on Feb. 11 at Central Park

By Shira Kalish,

BlueDevilHub.com Editor in Chief–

Ten members of the Davis High Climate Action Club and the Davis High Environmental Club marched from DHS to Central Park to strike on Feb. 11. According to their flyer, the purpose of the strike was to “pressure politicians to take climate action ahead of the United Nations climate summit.” The strike took place during the students´ afternoon classes.
Missing class to fight for our planet may seem irresponsible to some adults, but to young people, it is more than worth it. Striking is a way to show adults and people in power just how afraid we are for our futures. We do our best to bury this sense of impending doom beneath homework, extracurriculars and the overall busyness of our everyday lives, but when we step outside and it’s the fifth warm day in a row this February, we feel it. When wildfires turn the sky orange and render our air toxic to breath for months each year, we feel it. When we open our social media feeds and are flooded with news of climate disaster after climate disaster, we feel it.
“It’s a really powerful message that we felt that it was important enough to leave our classes to fight for climate change,” said junior Ben Simon, who attended the strike. “You can always make up classwork. You can’t make up what we’ve done to the environment. We’ve just got to keep fighting for better policies in the future and try to stop the bleeding.”
Understanding that our generation will likely be the last one to know any semblance of normalcy before these disasters stop being disasters and start being our everyday lives makes us feel powerless and nihilistic. Many of the other teenagers I know doubt that they will end up having children because they feel that they will not inherit a world worth living in. As young people, education is one of the most important parts of our lives, and rightfully so. But what is the point of all of the learning and growing that we do at school if we are only preparing for a future that doesn’t exist? While it may seem like student climate strikes leave just a small imprint, they are our way of turning our fear and dread into action.