A PAIR of enthusiastic primary school pupils convinced dale MP Helen Goodman to speak at their classmates after meeting her at a climate change protest.
Cotherstone Primary School pupils Mary and Bethy met the parliamentarian while taking part in a protest at Bishop Auckland about two weeks ago.
Bethy said: “She was doing a loud speech over a microphone and we happened to be standing next to her.”
Mary added: “We were very excited. My legs turned to jelly.”
Despite being nervous, the ten-year-olds spoke to the MP who agreed to visit their school the following week.
Mrs Goodman said: “I was very impressed. They were well informed and committed to the cause.”
A special assembly was called for the visit during which the MP spoke about how gas cookers and cars are releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and contributing towards climate change.
She said: “Carbon dioxide is a gas people make when they cook things. In order to stop climate change we have to stop those gases going into the air.”
Laws need to be changed to deal with the problem and government is currently working on that, she said.
She added: “We are going to make it illegal to have a petrol car in a few years and everyone will have to have electric cars.”
The children were quick to point out that a lot of electricity is generated by burning coal and Mrs Goodman agreed that more needs to be done to generate electricity using wind or solar energy.
She said: “We need to do things in this country and we have to make sure people in other countries are doing things, so we are trying to get big international agreements to get everyone to change at the same time.”
She urged the children to buy more local products, rather than items that are grown or manufactured in far away countries and have to transported, and to plant more trees, which are available for free from the Woodland Trust.
Asked why people hadn’t already started combatting climate change ten years ago, Mrs Goodman said: “People don’t want to change their way of life, people think it is too hard or it will make them poorer.
“Some people didn’t realise how bad the crisis was, how urgent it was.”
The 61-year-old concluded: “I think there is a big surge of energy from young people and that really is important. It is really important that people my age listen to you.”
