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Q&A with Indigo Aurora

16/6/2023

7 Comments

 
Picture
On Tuesday, local students took time off school to protest at the NAB's financing of the coal industry.  The Bass Coast Post asked Indigo Aurora why she attended.

Post: Why did you get involved with School Strike for Climate (SS4C)?

Indigo: I only got properly involved with SS4C this year, but I’ve been passionate about fighting for climate justice for years. When I joined Newhaven College at the start of 2023, my amazing friend and activist Joey Thompson introduced me to a local climate action group, and I’ve been helping to organise and attend local actions ever since. It makes me feel so empowered to get out there and fight for our environment, alongside other passionate individuals. Although we live rurally, it’s important that we join this national movement, as we can still achieve great things that will make an impact.

Post: Climate change makes me feel …
​

Indigo: Trapped, like my generation’s future is hopeless. It’s sometimes hard to maintain a positive mental attitude when it feels like the world is slowly crumbling around us.

Post: Do you talk to your friends and family about climate change and climate action?
Indigo: I talk about climate change with my friends and family very frequently, as it’s on my mind so often. My family are more than supportive of me, and my friends seem to care when I discuss it with them.

​Post: Is this your first climate action or have you been involved in direct action before?
Indigo: This is not my first direct action, I have attended over five in total, and helped to organise three.
The Bass Coast SS4C (School Strike for Climate) group will join members of the Bass Coast Climate Action Network in Wonthaggi next Tuesday as part of the national Move Beyond Coal movement targeting banks that are financing the fossil fuel industry. The rally starts at the Wonthaggi NAB, on the corner of Billson and Graham Streets at 10.30am.
Post: “You should be in class!” What’s your response?
Indigo: The SS4C movement is not at all disregarding the importance of our education, it’s simply asserting that it is so crucial to fight for our dying climate, that we will sacrifice an important part of our lives for it. Students and young people often get treated like we have no power, so we use one of the only things we do have – the ability to strike from school and disrupt the daily order of things, to force the government and other people in power to take the climate crisis seriously.
 
Post: Do you expect the June 20 rally to influence the banks? Or do you see other benefits to the rally?
Indigo: Of course our main goal is to influence the banks to end all relationships with coal corporations, but the June 20 rally will have many other positive impacts. By gathering a large student population, we will not only disrupt the banks, but also raise awareness and form a social bond between all the protesters. This opportunity to get involved is invaluable, especially in a rural community where large climate actions aren’t particularly common. We hope to see many people there, fighting for climate justice alongside us.
 
Indigo Aurora is a year 10 student at Newhaven College. She lives in Cape Paterson.
​
Picture
2021 school climate strike, Wonthaggi. Photo: Aidan Windle,
7 Comments
Joey
18/6/2023 08:06:08 pm

Go Indi! You’re so awesome!

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Jacinta
18/6/2023 08:14:14 pm

You go Indi, such strong and powerful words keep going and speaking out against all of this!!!

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Wendy
19/6/2023 09:24:12 am

So wonderful to hear from a young person in our community, thanks Indi for sharing your perspective!

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Aerin
24/6/2023 09:39:10 am

Go Indi!!!

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Meryl & Hartley Tobin link
24/6/2023 04:26:36 pm

Congratulations to Indi and all the other young people who stand up to be counted on the Climate issue.
Future generations will pay for future-eating generations like ours. Those in power are either doing nothing or not enough to curb the appetites of those driven by the profit motive and who are either ignorant of the Science or who choose to ignore it.

David Attenborough knows the Science and the solution.

Not just our environment is under extreme pressure, but the whole world is under such extreme threat that David Attenborough says the world is at a turning point.

He, along with hundreds of top scientists, makes this unequivocally clear in 'Extinction and Climate Change with David Attenborough' https://iview.abc.net.au/show/extinction-with-david-attenborough.)

As the program illustrates, if we want something left for our children and future generations in perpetuity, we have to act now.

He said, "We can safeguard our planet's diversity but ... what happens next is up to every one of us."

David Attenborough urges us to look at our current lifestyles and says we have to educate our children on the way Nature works. We have to realise plants are an integral part of our existence. "[Future generations] will look back on our generation with absolute horror," he says. "We are walking a tragic road of extinction."

It is time to act now, not wringe our hands when our biodiversity is so severely compromised it no longer can support flora or fauna, including human life.

Thank you, Indi and all those others who have got the message and are actively doing something about it.

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Anne Heath Mennell
25/6/2023 01:32:54 pm

Thank you, Indi, for doing what you can to make a difference.

Meryl and Hartley quote David Attenborough's wisdom.

I find a quote, from Jane Goodall, sustaining when I'm feeling overwhelmed:

'Together we can.
Together we will.'

I don't know the source but I also hang on to:

'You are defeated only when you give up ...'

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Peter
9/7/2023 11:15:55 pm

What an absolute load of nonsense!
These people and their activist and woke teachers have no idea what damage they are doing to the country.
Surely their answer is not acres of solar panels with a 15yr life span or vast areas of the seascape plagued with windmills that have an even smaller life span?
Where do they think the energy comes from to manufacture the solar panels - which mostly come from China? Its coal coming from Australian coal mines. The difference is that China (which is building new coal fired power stations at the rate of dozens per year) is using far more efficient technology to burn the coal and produce far less emissions. Sadly our power companies and the likes of that useless Minister for Energy Chris Bowen would rather export the product then buy it back as an import - rather than assist the power companies to invest in new technology.
Then there is Nuclear again our governments would rather dig the uranium and export it than use it ourselves. Small modular Reactors that are now being built across Europe is not even being considered by this government!
Going back to solar - have any of these people considered what happens to these panels and wind turbines at the end of their useful life ?
If the solar farms that get built are covering arable farming land (which most farmers are opposed to) where do these people think there food is going to be produced?
So many unanswered questions yet the climate activists just want to rush on blindly creating what is likely to be an even worse scenario.

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