A 13-year-old Scottish pupil is starting a week of strike action outside her school to protest over the lack of progress on climate change.
Holly Gillibrand, from Fort William, will stand outside Lochaber High School for an hour a day between 8.45am and 9.45am to raise awareness over the issue.
Her action has been inspired by 15-year-old Swedish student Greta Thunberg who last year went on strike from school in Sweden after a spate of heat waves and wildfires.
Her demands for the Swedish government reduce carbon emissions gained worldwide attention and she has inspired thousands of pupils across the world to take part in student strikes.
As of December 2018, more than 20,000 students had held strikes in countries across the world including Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, the Netherlands, Germany, Finland, Denmark, Japan, Switzerland, the UK and the United States.
Holly said: "I am striking because we are running out of time. Thousands of children around the world should not be having to miss classes because of our leaders inability to treat the climate crisis as a crisis."
Holly announced her planned weekly strike in December from her Twitter account in a message addressed to Prime Minister Theresa May in which she said: "I am going to be striking from school because I will not sit silently while you and the British government contributes to the destruction of our only planet."
Friday 15th February will see a UK-wide Youth Strike 4 Climate with students of schools, colleges and universities planning actions around the UK, including one at Glasgow University.
The action is part of a campaign run by Extinction Rebellion which is demanding that the UK Government reduces carbon emissions to net zero by 2025.
In a recent interview with The Herald Holly said: "Climate change is what concerns me most about the world. My family have been worried about climate change, but it’s only started dawning on me in the last few years that it’s really serious and that we need to do something about it.
"We stopped eating meat because that’s bad for the environment and we try to limit the amount of times we go in the car. We use green energy and we’re going to start growing our own vegetables.
"Politically, there just needs to be much more action, because politicians and leaders are having all these climate talks, but nothing is actually happening."
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