Many of them aren’t eligible to vote yet, but the people who are most likely to still be living in the world 50 years from now banded together in Montgomery on Friday at the Alabama Youth Climate Strike to demand elected officials take action on climate change.

“Alabama is known for being slow to change,” organizer Isabel Hope, 16, of Tuscaloosa said at the event. “That is not acceptable anymore.”

Hope was one of several students who spoke at the event, part of the larger Youth Climate Strike, a series of youth-led climate protests around the world. About 60 people turned out for the event in Montgomery under dreary, grey skies on the rain-soaked steps of the Alabama State Capitol.

Their message: We’ll have to deal with the effects of climate change longer than you will.

“The people in office now are not going to be here for the true effects of climate change,” said Olivia Porrill, of Gardendale, who is a senior at the Alabama School of Fine Arts. “But all of us who are under 18 will be here, and we’ve been given no voice. That, I feel, is very unfair.”

Porrill spoke at the megaphone about her first time scuba diving, and the majesty of the coral reefs, which are being threatened by a changing climate and ocean acidification.

The students urged elected officials to take climate change seriously, pushed for transitions away from fossil fuels to renewable energy and advocated for a “Green New Deal.”

Several speakers also cited the 2018 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which said that the world only had about 12 years to act to prevent warming from exceeding 1.5 degrees Celcius, the goals of the Paris climate agreement. By that count, we’re now down to 11 years.

While the overall message was similar to student protests around the world, several of the homemade signs in the crowd were distinctly Alabama. Journey King, 18, of Montevallo, carried a sign saying “Some of y’all never read ‘The Giving Tree’ and it shows,” featuring a drawing of President Donald Trump under the tree from Shel Silverstein’s iconic children’s book.

Another, directed at Alabama’s pro-life legislators, read “You fight so hard for us to have babies. I’m fighting for the air they’re supposed to breathe.”

Hope co-organized the rally with Love Lundy, a 17-year-old from Madison, who successfully ran a “March for Our Lives” student event after the Parkland, Fla. school shooting last year. Many of the the young people who joined for the rally were meeting for the first time.

“It’s so exciting to see young people of our state are finally being represented and our voices are finally being heard,” Hope said. “I want to have a livable future and we only have 11 years to fix climate change.”