Bathurst rally held in support of school climate strikes

The rally focused on drawing attention to the concerns around the Federal Government's gas-led recovery, major threats to the environment and the dangers of flooding.

Rally participants began near the low-level Hereford Street bridge, before going up William Street speaking to local businesses before finishing at Calare MP Andrew Gee's office on the corner of Bentinck and Keppel Street.

While Mr Gee was not present at his office on Friday, the rally left him a basket full of plants and other items that highlighted the danger of the changing climate.

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While he believes the state governments are responding to climate change appropriately, Bathurst Community Climate Action Network (BCCAN) president Jack Fry was disappointed with the Federal Government push for a gas-led recovery out of the coronavirus pandemic.

"We're looking at six to eight years before we avoid the tipping point and the world is responding, which is great," he explained.

"Governments all around the world are responding and so are our state governments in Australia too but the Federal Government is not.

"It's going with this gas-led recovery and gas is still a fossil fuel. It causes fracking. We can't head down this route. It's a band-aid solution and it will become redundant in a decade anyway."

Mr Fry said it's important that the Federal Government moves away from fossil fuels and look towards renewable energy sources in the future.

"It's so urgent we focus on renewables like pumped-hydro or wind, just not gas," he said.

"It's just madness. Our main focus is we want just transition of jobs otherwise we hit this wall. We just haven't transitioned well enough.

"As we are learning with climate change, it exacerbates the extreme events we do have.

"When we have drought, we have longer droughts and more extreme days within those droughts. When we have rain events, we have more serious storms. That's what we're focusing on today."

While the rally was held at midday to better suit people to attend during their lunch break, there wasn't any school students in attendance, at least at the start.

"We put it out there but BCCAN doesn't want to actively take kids out of school," he said.

"We just put it on and we're happy if people come down. It's their choice.

"I don't want to jeopardise people's future, they've got to study and learn how to survive in this changing world."