UCC staff to support Friday’s climate strike
September 17th, 2019
University College Cork has urged its staff and students to join the global school strike against climate inaction this Friday.
The college has encouraged strong support for young climate activists in an email sent to UCC members by Professor John O’Halloran, the college’s Deputy President and Registrar.
“UCC supports those voices from a generation that will be most impacted by climate change,” Prof O’Halloran said. “We need national and international action now.”
UCC is slated to hold a climate vigil on the Quad on one of the world’s most sustainable campuses at 11:30 AM on Friday in support of “a generation working to demand action on an issue too grave to ignore”.
Speaking to The Green News, Síofra Richardson of UCC’s Environmental Society welcomed the university’s invitation of solidarity with young climate activists.
“We are proud to see our university not only recognises the gravity of the climate crisis but demonstrating solidarity with grassroots activists,” she said.
“The recognition of the Global School Strike for Climate by a leading educational institute in Ireland is monumental for the movement. We are beginning to be taken seriously.”
Ms Richardson, who is also a member of Extinction Rebellion (XR), said that UCC’s support of the youth climate uprising is in line with XR’s “core principles” of “telling the truth”.
“This action surely indicates a turning point in public discourse around protest for the environmental cause. We are no longer alone in this challenge,” she said.
“We look forward to joining fellow students and staff on Friday in standing up for what is right and demanding climate action, now.”
This Friday, thousands of young people in Ireland and around the world will walk out of their classrooms and take to streets to reiterate their demands for immediate climate action from world leaders.
In Ireland, rallies are slated to take place in various locations across the country including Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Galway, Tralee and Dundalk, with adult volunteers expressing their preparedness to preside over the youth rallies.
Almost 20 Irish academics have signed an open letter “wholeheartedly” supporting the global climate strike movement whose concerns rest on “solid, incontrovertible evidence” of a climate breakdown.
The international letter is currently signed by over 800 academics mainly from across Europe as they outline their support for the global school strike movement.
The list of Irish signees includes some of Ireland’s leading minds on climate change policy, including UCD’s Cara Augustenborg and Diarmuid Torney of DCU, as well as legal experts such as UCD’s Andrew Jackson and NUI Galway’s Maeve O’Rourke.
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