Emma Lim
© Isaac Olson/CBCClimate-change activist Emma Lim
An 18-year-old McGill University student pledges to not have children until she is sure the Canadian government is taking serious steps to battle climate change.

And hundreds more are following in her footsteps.

"Our government isn't doing enough," Emma Lim said on CBC Montreal's Daybreak Tuesday. The steps provincial and federal lawmakers are taking are "nowhere near the action needed," she said.

The young climate activist decided to take action of her own — launching a climate-change movement dubbed, "#No Future, No Children," that is quickly gathering steam.

Her campaign, which invites all Canadians to participate, officially kicked off Monday on Parliament Hill.

As of Tuesday morning, more than 300 people have signed her online pledge, which states: "I pledge to not have children until I am sure my government will ensure a safe future for them."

Having kids is something Lim has always thought was in her future, but she wants a future where, every fall, she can watch the leaves change colour.

She wants to go sledding with her kids in the winter and swimming in the ocean in the summer.

"I am giving up my chance of having a family because I will only have children if I know I can keep them safe," she writes on her website.

"It breaks my heart, but I created this pledge because I know I am not alone."

She wants her children to breathe clean air and live a life in economic security — not the possible insecurity wrought by climate change, she said.

Lim said she comes from a family of Holocaust survivors who have experienced first-hand the impact mass migration can have on people's lives.

Mass migration caused by a global climate crisis could be many times what her family experienced and just the idea that her children may have to "again face the very worst of humanity terrifies me," she said.

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