According to some protesters, the heavy smoke blanketing the Bega Valley on Friday was more evidence of the need to act on lowering the country's carbon emissions to reduce the impacts bushfires can have.
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About 200 people attended the most-recent School Strike 4 Climate action in Bega as smoke from fires north of Batemans Bay drifted to the region on the day.
It is one year since the strikes began and the student-directed movement is not showing any sign of slowing down with thousands of people taking part across about 60 locations - this time also calling on politicians to increase support for traditional custodian land management and the Rural Fire Service in addition to taking real action on climate change.
NSW Greens MP David Shoebridge, who spoke at the Bega strike, said the movement was having an impact as the country had seen a "marginal shift" in the Liberal Party's energy policy and the right of politics was having a "small degree of embarrassment" on climate change.
He said the centre of politics had also shifted, as instead of being "ambivalent" it was "anxious and increasingly angry" and demanding more from politicians, but Labor had been "missing in action" on the issue.
"They seem to have taken the wrong lesson from the last election; that they can hide from the climate emergency, while our cities are surrounded by fires and smoke and our entire state is in drought," he said.
Mr Shoebridge called on the NSW government to have binding climate targets for 2030, but while the strikers are calling for 100 per cent renewable energy generation over exports by that time he thought 55 per cent was "more practical".
On Friday, the strikers held speeches in Littleton Gardens before marching to Bega MP Andrew Constance's office in the town and holding a "disobedience" dance.
One of the student speakers said while politicians had the power to create change, they had not been doing anything.
"So it's been left to us, which is why we're striking," she said.