It was the youth who took charge for the climate change strike in Bega on Friday. After all, it was their future they were fighting for.
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About 500 people attended the event in Littleton Gardens organised by local youth, with a smaller contingent of protesters walking into town from North Bega.
Across Australia tens of thousands students walked out of their classrooms as part of the same movement, Schools Strike 4 Climate, with other protests also taking place all over the world.
In Bega, local teenagers Genevieve Comer-Kleine, Ella Burke and Esme Barker said the movement's demands included 100 per cent renewable energy generation by 2030 and no new coal, oil or gas projects, including the controversial Adani mine in Queensland.
"I feel the government is not doing nearly enough to speak up about climate change and we don't have enough policies in place to combat it at the moment," Ella said.
"Even though it's hard we need to do something because it will affect all of us in the future."
While she and Genevieve said they were scared for their futures, Esme said climate change was still a concept that was hard to comprehend.
"When you look out there it doesn't look like there's a problem, but there is," Genevieve said.
"That's why people need to educate themselves.
"Everyone wants this: they can't say no anymore."
At Littleton Gardens most of the speakers who got onstage to share their thoughts about the climate emergency were teenagers, including Luca Yi who talked about why the students needed to strike.
"I can't vote. I can't change policy. These strikes are the only way I can make my voice heard," he said.
Harry Haggar questioned why the students should be at school studying to get a job in the future when the future might not exist.
Nineteen-year-old Doctor George Mountain resident and climate action campaigner Hannah Doole also spoke, where she said the strike was not just about protecting the environment, but also about preventing social collapse and mass starvation.
While she said some schools in the Bega Valley had been supportive about allowing their students to attend the strike, others had been "incredibly restrictive".
"These people that prevented us from trying to protect our future are betraying us and betraying our future," she said.
When one of the organisers of the strike spoke, 11-year-old Jada Koeck, she brought with her Prime Minister Scott Morrison's phone number and asked everyone in the crowd to call him at the same time to ask him for greater action on climate change.
There were also a few other dignitaries, such as Djiringanj and Ngarigo elder Aunty Colleen Dixon.
She said it was important to notice the little changes in the world, for instance she used to see bogong moths on her screen doors every year, but did not see them anymore.
"It's really important because they all have a meaning to this climate," she said.
"Once something has been taken from Mother Earth it's very destructive because you can never replace what was there in the first place."
When Member for Eden-Monaro Mike Kelly spoke to the crowd he said he wanted to "apologise to you all on behalf of the political leadership that has failed you up until now".
He said the "principle governments should apply is the precautionary principle", and if climate change deniers were wrong about the effects global warming will have on the planet then their inaction will have killed "the future of kids".
Also, earlier this year Queensland's Labor government gave the final environmental approval to Adani's Carmichael mine, but at the strike Dr Kelly told the crowd "yes, Adani should be stopped".