On Friday, May 24, senior students from Mudgee High School left campus and walked the main streets of Mudgee, joining others around the world in hoping to bring awareness to climate change inaction.

The Mudgee Guardian spoke with two of the students during the walk about their intentions.

Mia Swords, one of the students participating, said while it technically wasn't a strike, the message was critically important nonetheless.

"It's not really a strike, we signed out [laughs]," she said.

"We're going to try and get awareness [for climate change] within the community in a positive light,"

"We don't want negative attention, we understand that Mudgee is a mining community as well as a tourist community, we get that."

Mia said they're hoping that even though they can't yet vote, that people in power pay attention.

"We're hoping that some of our ministers see it, think about and consider us because we can't exactly vote," she said.

We do this because it's our future, it's the planet we live on, it's our habitat and we should care for it and help keep it sustainable. Of course we will do it [strike] again if we need to."

Another student, Stephanie Phillis said we need to act now or risk permanent damage.

"It's important to do stuff for climate change because it's going to happen. If we don't do stuff now, our whole world system is going to start collapsing soon," she said.

"We've already seen decreases in insect populations and ecosystems, rising sea levels and more,"

"By 2040 if we don't reduce our emissions by 40 per cent these warming patterns will be set permanently,"

One common criticism is that individual people can't make a difference, though Stephanie says there are ways. "It's very hard to reduce emissions yourself, it's big businesses that are producing the emissions. The mining industry, the power industry," she said.

"You can ride your bike more or recycle your clothing more often, because the fashion industry is probably the second-largest industry that needs to reduce emissions."

Around the world, pressure is mounting on governments to make substantial changes to their climate targets to drastically reduce carbon emissions with many suggesting we aren't acting quickly enough.

At the beginning of May, MPs in UK Parliament approved a motion to declare an environment and climate emergency and recently Britain - for the first time since 1882 - went one week without burning any coal.