A lot of officious adults have been saying that there’s little point in school pupils striking in protest at the lack of action on climate change, as it will have no economic effect. They have a point, and so I would like to put forward a suggestion that may work better.

Schoolchildren have no voice at the ballot box or wealth-creating labour to withdraw, but the pounds in their pockets weigh as heavily in the till as anybody else’s. We are at the beginning of Lent, when Christians traditionally deny themselves the good things in life in order to achieve a higher goal: why don’t our children hold a consumer-spending strike for this period? Buy – or have others buy for you – only life’s essentials: no sweets, makeup, computer games, sparkly unicorn poo slime, cinema tickets; buy clothes and books only if compulsory for school; if you usually buy a pasty or a sandwich at lunchtime, sign up for school dinners instead (I know, I know, but it will be a conspicuous sacrifice…).

Combine the financial strike with a conventional one, with lots of banners letting us supposedly responsible grownups know what you are doing and why, and see if the dent you can put in the economy will wipe the smiles off our faces.

Rachel Savage (age 51)

Sturton by Stow, Lincolnshire

• Mark O’Connell, reviewing David Wallace-Wells’ The Uninhabitable Earth (Review, 2 March), underlines our political complacency alongside our denial of the effects of climate change. If the Guardian ran a daily column on one side of the front page citing headlines of new evidence, there would be no avoiding the topic. For example, Wallace-Wells asserts: “We are now burning 80% more coal than we were just in 2000.” Some evidence could be edited out daily as new evidence became available.

Hannah Morrow

Haslingfield, Cambridgeshire

• The Guardian letters page is marking International Women’s Day by publishing only letters from women – see them all at gu.com/letters and at the following links:

Women worldwide must be heard and respected

Equality for African women

Rape victims can’t trust the justice system

Does taking Friday afternoon off school do children any harm?

Cuts severely damaged Ruskin College’s role and reputation

Renewing Trident is no moderate policy

Shakespeare’s a sage on sleep’s salvation