‘I’d like to grow old’: teens send grim message at Vancouver climate change protest

VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) — Climate change is killing us: that’s the message students in the Lower Mainland are sending as they join kids all over the world in protest.

Only kids themselves, teens protesting at Vancouver’s CF Pacific Centre said they were thinking about the children they might have one day, and what that world might look like:

“I’d like to grow old, maybe have kids, see them go to college and not live in a wasteland, you know?”

“I don’t want to have kids, and know that I’m bringing them into a world where everything could go wrong at any minute and live in fear, like I feel like I often do.”

https://twitter.com/lkretzel1130/status/1175133374756732929?s=20

More than 200 students lay down on the food court floor during a lunchtime rush, pretending to be dead — the very thing they say climate change will do to them and future generations if world leaders don’t take action, and soon.

While a die-in may seem like a grim way to send their message, drastic times sometimes call for drastic measures.

“In this movement, I think a ‘die-in’ is a really good way to showcase the consequences,” one teen tells NEWS 1130.

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• Vancouver students plan dramatic protest to bring attention to deadly impact of climate change

The students filed into the mall in small groups after marching from the Vancouver Art Gallery. They lied down in the food court in silence for 11 minutes, symbolic of the number of years the United Nations says the world has to act before climate change causes irreversible damage to the planet.

“We are dying here today because we have 11 years left to save our futures from the climate crisis,” one teen said using a megaphone.

Teens chanted as they marched through the mall, calling for ‘climate justice now.’

Asked a couple students why they thought it was important to participate in the die-in. pic.twitter.com/uY3mKXYlPa

— Lasia Kretzel (@lkretzel1130) September 20, 2019

Protests took place around the world Friday, with millions of people demanding action to address the climate crisis.

The protests come as climate groups kick off a week of global action, ending with another mass climate strike Sept. 27.