About 150 people gathered at Trent University on Friday as part of a worldwide school walkout that saw more than a million students leave the classroom to demand speedier political action on climate change.

Many of the local protesters were Trent University students, but there were also many community members and a couple of high school students.

Ethel Nalule, a Trent University student, told the crowd through a megaphone that climate change is an emergency — yet few people are treating it as one.

"It's like your house is one fire," she said to the crowd. "If we don't take action now, there are things that will destroy humanity."

The walkout was organized on campus by the Ontario Public Interest Research Group of Peterborough, the Kawartha World Issues Centre and the Trent Central Student Association.

Members of the Peterborough Alliance for Climate Change Action — a group of climate change activists in Peterborough — were also there, as were local members of the Green party.

The group gathered at about 11 a.m. outsize Gzowski College for speeches, then walked over the Faryon Bridge and gathered again inside the Student Centre for further speeches.

It was also the open house day at Trent, meaning the campus was abuzz with prospective students and their families taking campus tours.

Nico Ossa Williams spoke to the crowd outside Gzowski College through a megaphone.

He's in Grade 11 at St. Peter Secondary School; he said he moved to Peterborough from his native Chile about eight months ago with his family.

He said he was visiting Chile about a month ago, where there's currently a scorching heat wave.

"It was 40 degrees there every day," he said, adding that it spurred him to activism.

The Youth Strike for Climate movement was launched in September by Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg, who started striking alone on Fridays.

Since then it's turned into a global movement that culminated on Friday with massive student walkouts the world over.

Sheldon Rooney, the president of the Trent Green party association and an environmental science student, describes Trent as "an environment and green school," one where students are quite attuned to the perils of climate change.

"Denial isn't a thing here — it's just not," he said.

Never mind preoccupations such as the economy or immigration, he said: if climate change continues, nobody will be prospering and there will be mass migrations because some areas of the world will no longer be able to sustain human life.

"It affects absolutely everyone — no one will be left out of this," Rooney said.

Earlier this week, Thunberg was nominated for the Nobel peace prize for starting the school strike movement.

Brock Grills, the Green candidate in the next federal election for Peterborough-Kawartha, said he hopes Thunberg wins the Nobel Peace Prize.

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"If she won, that would be a nice sign of the way a world is changing," he said. "Let's give the prize to a young, 16-year-old woman who stands up to billion-dollar oil companies.… She deserves it."

joelle.kovach

@peterboroughdaily.com

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