The Cork public are urged to join Friday's Climate Strike march

STUDENT climate activists in Cork are urging the public to join a ‘climate strike’ this weekend.

Students in Cork have been leading the way on climate advocacy in Ireland.

Actions include the global climate strike in March which saw more than 5,000 young people on the streets of Cork to the smaller group of weekly strikers who have been sitting outside City Hall each Friday.

Student activist Darragh Cotter, 17, commented that Cork was “arguably Ireland’s climate action capital”.

This Friday, Cork youth organisers have set their sights on a different demographic; the general public.

They, along with other youth activists internationally, are asking people of all ages to join the school strikers on the streets for a two-hour march, which will gather on Grand Parade at 12pm and march down South Mall returning to Grand Parade for a rally with music and speakers. “Even if you can’t join for the whole thing, if you could come out for an hour or half an hour during your lunch break to show your support, it would mean the world to us,” said core organiser Remus Teahan, age 16.

The protesters are calling on the Government to take immediate, radical action on climate change, this would include rapid reduction of Ireland’s carbon emissions on a systemic level as well as concepts such as the “just transition”

Saoi O’Connor, age 16, from Skibbereen, who has been called “Ireland’s Greta Thunberg”, said: “The Irish Government is beginning to realise that this is an issue that they need to be paying attention to, but their plans are not ambitious enough, what we are demanding is bare minimum based on what the science has shown to be necessary, and yet we are said to be too extreme. I do not think it is extreme to believe in science.”

O’Connor, whose placard reading “The Emperor Has No Clothes” has become a symbol for the climate strike movement in Ireland, has been striking for 36 weeks, and is one of the core organisers of this Friday’s march.