Let’s be honest, climate change has hovered in our thoughts for a while now. For over a decade, the topic has confronted us in the media, in advertising, and in conversation. We wonder whether there is something we can do or should be doing. But all potential solutions seem like too little, and too late. Doing nothing doesn’t seem like an option, but deciding on an approach takes too much energy, and it takes the joy out of things we want to do.
Recently, however, we have been confronted with a different picture - video clips of tens of thousands of young people bearing signs scrawled with provocative and pointed messages marching though our indecision. Young people have watched, with growing frustration, their parents and politicians wallow in polarizing misinformation, ignorance, apathy, and an irresponsible attachment to business as usual while their future grows bleaker. Their frustration is apparent in the chants they repeat - “What do we want? Climate Justice! When do we want it? Now!” - and on the banners they carry - “I’m not doing my homework until my parents do theirs,” “raise your voice, not the sea level,” “plastic is not fantastic,” “planet over profit,” “fossil fools,” “system change, not climate change.”
That these young people have shamed their elders into action is important, but how they are doing it is even more so. For they have embraced the issues surrounding environmental degradation systematically, unreservedly and frankly. They sense how high the stakes truly are, not just for themselves but for the disadvantaged and disenfranchised, for the flora and fauna. Their focus is set on the health of the world they will inherit. By maintaining themselves as the face of their movement, they seem able to circumvent the political log-jams that have dogged the global conversation. They are also putting words into concrete action, as can be seen on a number of youth-based websites.
The current “climate strikes” were prompted by Greta Thunberg, a teenager who started her strike outside the Swedish Parliament in autumn of 2018 and then made her way to the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Katowice Poland that December. She made the headlines and, in doing so, she energized an impressive and growing number of environmental and climate action groups started by young people around the global.
Most visible is the Fridays for Future movement. Its simple media platform posts information about climate protests across the globe. It is clear that students continue to join protests, albeit monthly, not weekly. Their goal is to make their demands apparent through noise and controlled disruption. Students in Ireland convinced the country to declare a “Climate Emergency,” as have 600 states and local authorities throughout the world.
Protests in Switzerland have been incredibly well run. Keynote speakers continue to be high school students, with the occasional scientist brought in. Here in Bern, the high school students are supported by a logistics team of university students responsible for liaising with police and city services. The last protest, on the 24th of May, was organized to allow satellite groups from nearby small towns to arrive noisily by train in time to join in the general protest. These marches have consistently attracted over 5000 in the larger Swiss cities. In many cities across the globe, the numbers have been in the ten-thousands.
It has been suggested that the students are just looking for time off school, but in fact they often seek to make up the missing classes. At a school outside of Bern, students proposed that they plan climate change lessons for primary school classes; their proposal was accepted. Teachers have also been assigning independent study - articles and books to broaden their understanding of climate change.
And the students are not just protesting. A quick look at some initiatives started by young people shows that they are acting in many ways, and they started well before Greta Thunberg took the UN conference by storm. My favorite is a project I heard about on a Climate One podcast. Sagar Aryal was still a primary school student in Nepal when he started an environmental science readers’ club in 2006 with friends; they collected 3000 books. At a children’s conference in 2010, Aryal heard of an organization in Germany started by another primary school student “Plant for the Planet.” He is now on the board of this organization, which has the motto “stop talking, start planting.” They have already planted over a billion trees and are working towards a trillion.
In 2011, a group of Oregon children filed a case against the US government that demanded a halt to increases in US carbon emissions. The children base their claim on the risk to the livelihood and security of their and future generations. They have been supported in this process by Our Children’s Trust, which offers not only legal and scientific advice, but also provides scenarios and support for a carbon-free future. This case continues today as Juliana vs the US Government, and the Trust has filed similar cases in every US state. There are also cases in other countries, including the Netherlands and Pakistan.
The Sunrise Movement grew out of multiple initiatives, starting in 2013, to conceive not just a coherent plan for climate action but for energy security and social justice. These groups unified in 2017 to produce the Green New Deal which has placed both climate and social justice policies at the forefront of US political debates.
Will these actions enough? The energy and sober focus generated by young people, who only lose if they can’t change the status quo, may well have brought us to the tipping point. If you want to know what you can do to change their future, ask them; they now know more than many of their elders. Better yet, support the organizations they have founded; act now so that we can all hope for a viable future.
title photo by Helen Klingl
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