Thank you very much, Llywydd, and thank you for the opportunity to speak to this motion tabled by Plaid Cymru to declare this Assembly’s support for the school climate strikes. Fridays for future, youth for climate, youth strike for climate—whatever badge you want to give it, there is no doubt that it’s now an international movement of young people who have decided that the time has come for their voice to be heard in the discussion and in the stance taken to insist upon action to prevent global warming and to tackle the climate emergency that we are experiencing at the moment.

Now, we know the story dating back to the actions of Greta Thunberg, when she held that protest in August 2018—just 12 months ago—outside the Riksdag in Sweden, holding a 'school strike for the climate' sign. She decided that she needed to do this every Friday until the Swedish Government aligned to the Paris accord. She came up with the slogan ‘Fridays for future’, and in 12 months we have seen this movement spreading to all parts of the world.

She, of course, will participate in school strikes in the United States this Friday, 20 September, and these strikes will now happen on every continent across the globe—from Iceland to Cyprus in Europe, India, Pakistan, Australia, Japan, the Philippines, South Africa, nations in South America, the United States and Canada. Here in Wales, I will be joining a group of young people from the county of Conwy who will come together in Colwyn Bay. I know that there will also be action in Wrexham, as there will be in a number of other towns in Wales. The timing, of course, is significant, bearing in mind that there is a climate summit being held by the UN next week.

Now, these strikes have been exceptionally effective, not only turning heads and attracting coverage, but engendering discussion around the climate emergency in classrooms and on school playgrounds, and also in homes, in pubs and in Parliaments, of course, as we have experienced today and as we have seen a number of times before today. But, along with what Extinction Rebellion have been doing over recent months, the political narrative around climate change has been transformed. Indeed, the terminology has changed. We’re not saying ‘climate change‘ now—we are now recognising it as a climate emergency. I was very pleased that this Senedd has supported a Plaid Cymru motion to declare a climate emergency—the first Parliament, as I understand it, in the world to do that. It was good to see the Welsh Government declaring a climate emergency too.

The momentum that’s been built by these young people, and by others, of course, has created this new environment in terms of a better understanding of what needs to be delivered. Now, I do understand that some people will perhaps think that we don’t want to encourage young people not to attend classes, and to miss a few hours or maybe a day’s education every now and again—that there is a risk to the pupils’ education as a result of that. But, that is nothing compared to the risk of the implications of climate change that they are going to face a lot more than many of us will experience.