At our demonstration on 14 December, Phoebe aged 17 years old explained the importance of protecting nature, greenspace and trees for combating the effects of climate change.
Here’s a link to Phoebe’s speech on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xm0DbBjT9g0
On my 17th birthday I chose to attend COP26 and it was an experience I will never forget.
But at 17 years old, should I really have felt the need to attend a climate conference, where adults attempted to create new agreements to protect our home that should have existed decades ago – when children like Severn Cullis-Suzuki were beginning to speak out?
Right now, multiple people are missing in Kentucky, which sits in a first world, Western country, due to a severe tornado. Climate change is getting closer and closer to home, and one day the UK will wake up and realise that we are next in line for devastating destruction on a greater scale.
The greenery of our planet is under threat, as is our co-dependent relationship with nature.
Without plants, our world would be inhospitable, and now our future is looking more and more like a horror film.
In 2007 and 2016, Berkshire flooded. The first time, I was too young to remember what happened, but the children born in the decade after me will not have the ability to forget, as their lives will include looking to when the next flood will be and how they can prepare for it.
Maidenhead cannot wait 10 years for the promised 10,000 new trees to grow up.
Even in a decade’s time, these trees will not be mature enough to absorb the amount of water required to combat flooding at a substantial level. We need to protect as many fully-grown trees as possible if we want to live to see a Berkshire which is not submerged in water for a quarter of the year.
The greenery residing within Maidenhead Golf Course is a sponge for flood water, a biodiverse habitat for nature and a carbon sink.
Every metre of those 132 acres is precious and vital to us.
We need to protect the homes that exist today and those which will be built on brownfield sites, and not cause more suffering to those who move here for a better future, only to find their homes under a foot of water.
Maidenhead Great Park is the lungs of this town and we cannot allow our council, our leaders, to destroy what may be one of the greatest hopes our borough has for fighting the climate crisis.
If deforestation is the problem, then preservation and reforestation has to be our solution.