Every Friday Sophia walks out of school and places hundreds of pairs of shoes outside her city hall, each with a placard displaying a message demanding more action against climate change.

Her shoe protest has caught the attention of millions of social media followers. Each pair of shoes represents a fellow protester who can’t be there because of COVID restrictions.

Sophia is worried about the future of the planet, but in particular the fate of the Boreal forest, a huge carbon sink that surrounds her city and stretches from Canada to Alaska, Scandinavia and Russia.

Her beloved forest is dying, rising temperatures are destroying it with increasing numbers of wildfires. In addition, oil production has uprooted an area of the forest the size of England.

Her ‘call to action’ is: “World Leaders need to listen to scientists and take action now, if we keep taking oil from the ground and pumping it into the air, the Earth won’t be here much longer.”