Scotland's first school climate strike protestor has criticised politicians from the European Parliament over their attitude towards global warming.
11-year-old Finlay Pringle, who travelled to Strasbourg from his home in Ullapool, Wester Ross, for a climate change debate, said it was poorly attended and little was achieved.
Finlay - the only protestor from Scotland to attend the debate with 60 young climate change campaigners from around the world, said politicians should be much more ambitious about stopping global warming.
He said: "We listened to the debate on climate change, but it was a real disappointment. A lot of MEPs didn't turn up which seems to be a pattern in these sort of debates.
"There was a debate at Westminster where lots of people didn't turn up and now it is happening here.
"I can't understand why there were not more people because if it is the world's biggest problem then you would think they would be more bothered."
Finlay was also disappointed with the debate, arguing targets being discussed were too far in the future.
He said: "The Greens were ok because they were talking about trying to find solutions now, but the other politicians talked about setting targets for 2030 and 2050.
Read more: Meet Scotland's first climate change school protestor
"All of us kids want something to be done right now because by the time they do anything it will be too late.
"People are already dying from climate change in certain countries so we need to start doing something right now."
At the meeting the EU set new criteria on the type of biofuels from palm oil that may be counted towards its renewable-energy goals.
It is a follow-up to a broader law agreed last year, when the European Parliament pushed for restrictions on the use of palm oil following concerns its production caused deforestation and aggravated climate change.
Overall, the EU aims to cut emissions by at least 40 per cent by 2030 compared with 1990 levels, boost the share of renewable energy to 32 per cent and increase energy efficiency by 32.5 percent.
“Climate change is a serious concern for Europeans and the commission is increasing efforts to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions,” the EU said in a statement.
Read more: Councils urged not to punish pupils for climate strikes
Last summer, Finlay was inspired to join the climate change protest after hearing about the stance taken by 16-year-old Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg, who skipped school to raise awareness about the planet.
Her demands for the Swedish government to reduce carbon emissions gained worldwide attention and she inspired thousands of pupils across the world.
Hearing about her work made Finlay decide to take similar action himself, becoming one of the first pupils in the UK to hold a weekly hour-long strike outside his primary school from December 14th.
Green parties at the European Parliament invited young activists from around the world to attend the climate change debate.
Finlay was the only protestor to have been chosen from Scotland and is one of only three from the UK to join pupils from countries across the world including Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Iran, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Latvia, Lithuania and the Netherlands.
Read more: Climate strike comes to Scotland
Last week, councils were urged not to punish pupils for leaving school to take part in the next international climate change strike on Friday March 15th.
The worldwide action follows a UN climate summit in Poland which agreed rules for implementing an agreement which aims to keep global warming as close to 1.5C as possible by 2100.
However, the world remains on track for 3C of warming by the target date, which scientists says will bring catastrophic extreme weather resulting in mass extinctions of animals, the destruction of crops and widespread flooding.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article