That’s what it felt like this morning…

…when Nelson Boys college turned up and did a haka, when the Head Girl at Nelson Girls did a karakia then spoke so articulately, when Nelson Central School turned up with their school banner, Hope Primary School in their sports uniform so you knew it was their school, and when Ngatimoti school came up the street chanting “No more Coal, No more Oil, keep our carbon in the soil”. Then a friend sent a photo of one of the biggest marches ever in Wellington…

1000s and 1000s of students marched all over the country, including mine.

It’s not her first protest, there have been soooo many but it is the first where her peers outnumbered the adults.

She made a poster…

And here she is explaining climate change, thanks Mr Science and a show for sea week for the umbrella metaphor she totally got it.

• Helena: “There is a big umbrella like this and I am the earth and the sun is on top of me and it comes down under my umbrella, …catches it so it can’t go back up and that makes global warming”
• Me: “What is the umbrella? It’s not a real umbrella is it…”
• Helena: “No carbon dioxide made by the fossil fuels from cars”
• Me: “and what will happen when you warm up on your Planet?”
• Helena: “The habitats will all die and all the animals will die and we will start to die and we’ll die…. everything will die…”

She just stood there after this, wouldn’t bow. I will remind her tonight about the sheer number of people who were there today and who will take actions to stop this… please, just don’t take that flight, drive, and consume.

Then we get home and there has been a massacre and everything is different somehow. Not that I will tell her about the massacre yet… which future is worse, the lack of a certain kind of freedom and innocence about people, one where you entertain the possibility of being shot or your friends being shot, or the one where you are watching your world die slowly of “natural events”.

I was actually hopeful this morning.