I was impressed to hear young activists talking so eloquently and passionately about climate change policy down at The Strand. There were many students representing local schools across the Bay. It's high time we talk sensibly and act on climate change policy, and our young people have a significant voice to make this change happen.

It's a nonsense to continue to deny global warming and ecological crisis, what we need to do is design solutions and young people should be at the very centre of making these decisions. They are our future.

Young people are gifts for us.

As James Dator (Hawaiian futurist) claims, there are only four images of the future: status quo, transformative, a collapsed and a disciplined society. There is not a chance our society will remain as status quo over the next 100 hundred years, it's a nonsense to believe we will remain as we are, an economy based on carbon.

The Earth's atmosphere has now more than 400 ppm of carbon dioxide, well up from 800,000 years ago, well up from fifty years ago and it's time we stepped up as a society to understand the science behind climate change. With a looming global rise of 1.5 degrees, the world needs us to empower our young people to talk freely and rationally about the next steps.

S Taylor, Mount Maunganui.