We, the students of India, plead to inculcate climate education as a part of our curriculum so that we can ensure an aware and conscious youth as we are the first generation to feel the drastic effects of climate change and the last that are capable of doing something about it.

We see many school strikes and youth strikes by students who rightfully believe that there's not much point in going to school to get educated when people wouldn't listen to the educated.

We are hoping to reform the education system so that it could accommodate and acknowledge the current crises going on around us and rather than teaching us a few things about climate change in textbooks that students only read to pass tests and get good grades, we should focus on experiential rather than rote learning.

There's more to spreading awareness than just stating the facts. True education is about inducing a sense of urgency, responsibility, righteous fear and deserved hope. Only then can we get rid of hypocrisy and in other cases, absolute lack of knowledge.

What's even the purpose of having a good education system- is it creating an aware and conscious youth? Improving the quality of life? Hoping that at least someone would try to do something about the global crisis we're all currently starring in the eye?

The problem is that people don't always feel accountable for the environment and dismiss it as something external to our own existing while actually we're not so much destroying the nature(since humans didn't create it and it will continue to persist long after we're gone even if we cut down every last tree and drain every last river) as we are ourselves.

Since there really isn't much "nature" readily available to be noticed and appreciated in Delhi, or the entire world for that matter, we shouldn't restrict classrooms to four walls and keep the students close to nature as only when they start growing a sense of care and love for nature, along with the many species of plants and animals, would they be motivated towards preserving and protecting them.

We believe that these societal issues and climate change are closely linked to each other and only when the future of the country (not to state climate change as a national crisis) are aware of these crises would they be motivated towards negating them. We cannot rely on adults to understand and we do not blame them as in their time, climate issues were mostly regarded as limited to the poor and marginalized, which is not at all the case anymore.

After all, there's a reason it's called the tree of knowledge.

This petition is part of a campaign called "My book's a tree" by a youth-led environmental organization called The Last Straw. For more details, visit https://thelaststraworg.wixsite.com/thisisthelaststraw