Kids speak up on climate: Margaret and Tyler, 12, tell government what they want

Many children are aware of problems our planet has. Maybe you have good ideas for solutions? Do you think adults aren’t doing enough to fix the problems? Should they listen more to kids?

Well, in Scotland, the government has asked children what it should do about the climate – and it’s promised to make their ideas part of a national climate plan.

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“We matter”

Tyler, who lives in Livingston near the Scottish capital Edinburgh, says it made sense for politicians to listen to children like him, not just to adults:

We’re all in it together. But we matter because it’s our future. We are young.

Tyler, 12

Margaret, who lives in Scotland’s Western Isles, out on the Atlantic Ocean, agreed:

It’s everybody’s decision, and we are included in everybody. We’re not beneath everybody, we’re with everybody.

Margaret, 12

Listening to ideas

It all started when the government decided it had to listen to ordinary people to find out ways to fix the climate that everybody could agree on.

[Other countries have done things like this. You can read our story about France’s Climate Convention here.]

In Scotland, they found 100 people from all over the country, to spend 7 weekends over several months discussing the climate problems and coming up with solutions.

And what about the kids?

The youngest person of the 100 in the Climate Assembly was 16 – the age that you can vote in Scotland. But the government wanted to hear from to children too.

So, the Children’s Parliament, an organisation which helps kids speak up for their rights, found 100 children from 10 schools to take part in discussions. And 12 of them, including Margaret and Tyler, became “investigators”.

Their job? To find out what kids wanted and tell the Climate Assembly about it.

Dances, veggies, trees

Of course, the investigators couldn’t meet in person. But they talked together in weekly Zoom meetings, working hard but having fun too. (Check out the dance moves below!) And last month, their ideas went into the big report to the government.

Margaret was amazed that an idea she had has ended up being proposed. She suggested having a week every year where everyone would stop eating meat.

Tyler is keen on another of the children’s ideas – for a national tree-planting day when everyone in the country would plant a tree.

“If we all did it every year, you’d have a forest!” he said. It’s important that people realise that each of us can make a difference, Tyler added.

“Hanging on every word”

So did they feel that the grownups were listening to them? And how did that feel?

I was surprised. They were hanging on every word! It really touched me how much they wanted to hear from me – as if us children could become the next prime minister in like two weeks’ time.

Margaret

I feel adults are listening to us and I felt really good about it. We need to work together to make Scotland healthy and safe.

Tyler

At the start, some people had thought that it wasn’t a good idea to ask kids for solutions – but in the end, they realised that the children had come up with great suggestions which the government will try to put into action.

What’s next?

You might hear more from Tyler and Margaret and their friends in the autumn when world leaders will meet in Scotland to discuss climate change.

The meeting, called COP26, will be held in Glasgow in November. And the Children’s Parliament hopes the leaders will also listen to Scottish kids.

What do they want?

“Stop littering!” says Tyler. Plastic can hang around for 1,000 years, he says.

I don’t want my great great- great- great- great- great- grandchildren to see a plastic bottle from my era.

Tyler

It’s our future. Let us plant the trees. I’ll even water them on miserable days. Just let us take part of the lead!

Margaret