Hundreds of students around New Jersey skipped school Friday for a cause that runs much deeper than a typical day of hooky.

"We are here to pressure our local, state and federal officials to take action on climate change,” said Eden Summerlin, a 16-year-old junior from Madison High School, who spoke from the steps of Morristown’s town hall to a crowd of more than 100 students, parents and activists.

This was one of countless youth “climate strikes” organized by high and middle school students around the world Friday, in solidarity with a global movement that has steadily gained traction in recent months. At each strike, the core demands were the same: Slash greenhouse gas emissions, switch from fossil fuels to clean energy and create stronger laws and regulations to protect against pollution.

Student activists in Morristown tie ribbons as part of a climate strike on Friday, March 15, 2019. (Patti Sapone | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com)

Summerlin’s speech was just one of many at the Morristown rally, which was attended by all ages, from toddlers in strollers, to gray-haired lifetime environmentalists. An entire busload of students came just from Ridge and Valley Charter School in Blairstown.

Between student speakers, there was singing, chanting and ukulele playing. Protest signs dotted the crowd. A string of ribbons bearing statements of love to the planet fluttered in the wind.

Rachel Gurevich, a 14-year-old student at East Brunswick’s Churchill Junior High and one of the organizers of the Morristown strike, said she was hopeful that the global protests would push policymakers to take action.

“I think if they weren’t listening before, this will force them to,” Gurevich said.

The demonstrations stretched across the state.

In Montclair, students at Montclair High School staged a walkout. Students in Princeton and Mahwah held their own climate strikes; as well as students in New York City, Philadelphia and around the world.

According to Sana Shaikh, a 17-year-old student at the Morris County School of Technology and the lead organizer for New Jersey’s climate strikes, more than 2,000 strikes in 123 countries around the world took place Friday. Every continent was represented -- even Antartica, thanks to a solidarity strike held by German scientists.

“Ultimately, we are demanding the preservation of our future,” Shaikh said.

Friday’s climate strikes were the first globally coordinated set of actions since a Swedish girl named Greta Thunberg began refusing to go to school last August. Spurred on by Sweden’s hottest summer on record, according to The Guardian, Thunberg instead spent her time protesting in front of the Swedish parliament to call for new climate change policies.

In December, she gave a speech to global policymakers at a United Nation’s climate conference in Poland that went viral. Earlier this week, Thunberg was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. And through it all, Thunberg began inspiring other students around the world to take action.

Many students, like 14-year-old Sarah Mufson from the Morris County School of Technology, said that they became invested in climate issues after the release of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its latest report last October. The report laid out the potentially devastating effects that could come from the Earth warming just 1.5 degrees celsius. According to the report, humanity needs to cut its greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030 and eliminate all greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 in order to avoid warming even more than that.

“I think about the hard number of 11 years,” said Mufson, who will be 25 years old in 2030. “That really scares me.”

As the students in Morristown chanted, sang and gave speeches, they were occasionally greeted with honks of approval from cars passing by on South Street.

But at one point, during Summerlin’s speech, a utility van passed the crowd with its window rolled down.

“There’s no such thing! No such thing,” called out a voice from the van, expressing disbelief that climate change poses any problem at all. It was a faceless reminder of the opposition that the students and their supporters still face.

Michael Sol Warren may be reached at mwarren@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @MSolDub. Find NJ.com on Facebook.

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