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Young people are leading the global Climate Strike Movement.
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Millions of folks from around the world will turn
out today for massive actions
sparked by the literal life and death
crisis of the environment and largely led by students and young people who
realize their future has been
threatened stupidity and greed.
They are done being polite and
will no longer stand to be patted on the
head and told how cute or inspiring their actions are. A lot of people agree with them now and this
pointedly intergenerational Climate Strike
is being joined by scientists, labor unions, indigenous peoples, and even some politicians, governments, and business
groups most threatened.
Headline grabbing events have lent even
more urgency to the call. The Bahamas
lie in ruins from an almost unprecedentedly powerful hurricane as of now seven potential hurricanes are lined up across
the Atlantic each fed and strengthened by
warming waters and disrupted currents including the Gulf
Stream. A mere slow moving tropical depression is right now
dumping up to 40 inches of rain on South Texas—the kind of monsoon long familiar in South Asia which now threaten to become
regular events here, too. The polar North is losing its sea ice and glaciers from Greenland and Iceland to
Alaska are disappearing and raising sea levels.
Those threats have been mirrored in the Antarctic. Fires continue to rage across the globe
eating up crucial carbon sinks that
can temper rising temperatures. Australia is headed into its summer season expecting another year of
record breaking heat and drought so severe that swaths of the
country may become uninhabitable.
Yet,
predictably, there is pushback
officially led with zeal by the United States Government under the science denying Trump regime. Not only has the U.S. withdrawn from international climate pacts and flouted reversal of virtually every American environmental regulation it can lay its hands on. It does not just deny credible science; it actively suppresses
and censors research. Trade negotiations and even continued
support to long-time allies are used
to blackmail other nations.
The climate
strike is already well underway. In Australia,
which gets a head start, more than 300,000 have taken to the streets already in
Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, other
major cities and rural communities. The strike is supported not only by students,
but is endorsed by most major trade
unions many of whose members are taking the day off.
In the United Kingdom, where the student-led Extinction Rebellion is a
well-established force, trade unions have called for the first national General Strike since 1926. Boris
Johnson’s battered Tory government,
already disintegrating under his Brexit
clean break debacle, is in big trouble.
Every
participating country has its own story, its own heroes. Some, like New Zealand, plan their Strikes
for a week from today, September 27, the anniversary of the publication of Silent Spring, a foundational
ecological document in 1962. Other
countries are planning strikes and marches on both days in a one-two punch.
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Greta Thunberg outside the White House last week.
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In the U.S. the
largest Climate Strike action is expected in New York City, where the United
Nations is hosting an emergency
climate summit. Greta Thunberg, the
sixteen-year-old Norwegian school girl
who inspired the international student climate strike movement with her
solitary Friday strike in Oslo and
is now the movement’s most visible symbol
will be on hand supported by US Youth
Climate Strike, 350.org, MoveOn, Amnesty
International, Extinction Rebellion, Greenpeace
International, Oxfam, World Wildlife Fund, Indivisible, the March for Science, Women’s
March, Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Labor Network for Sustainability,
Green Faith, the Unitarian
Universalist Association (UUA), the Unitarian
Universalist Service Committee (UUSC) and dozens of others. New York Public
Schools have announced that participation by its students will be considered
an excused absence. A million or more are expected to take to
the streets in New York alone.
Other major U.S.
actions are scheduled today in Boston,
Washington D.C., Philadelphia, Chicago,
Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland,
and Seattle. They will be
supported by hundreds of local actions.
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Logo for the Chicago Youth Climate March.
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The Chicago Youth Climate Strike will start
at South Columbus Drive and East Roosevelt Road in the south end of
Grant Park near the Field Museum at 11am and march to Federal Plaza, South Dearborn and Adams,
for a rally featuring performers and
speakers.
I have been
promoting the Climate Strike on this blog and in social media for some time and was eagerly planning to take the train down to Chicago to participate. Alas
the other day while looking at the march route I came to an unfortunate but
irrefutable conclusion. I am simply no longer physically able to make such a march, to be on my feet for so many
hours, and to be largely unable to have access to toilets. Since my major
illness last year, even relatively moderate
exercise leaves me short of breath and
weak. It is a bitter
pill for a guy who used to walk miles regularly and who is an old fire horse ready to respond to any call for action. In fact, the realization leaves me
feeling heart broken and useless.
It must have
been weighing heavily on my mind because I woke
with a start last night. I suddenly realized that if Greta Thunberg
could start this whole ball rolling with her personal lonely vigil, there is no reason why I can’t conduct my own climate
strike right here where I live.
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My crappy homemade sign for my one geezer climate strike today.
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I took a marker to some poster board, and made a sloppy
sign. While the March is on in
Chicago, I will stand at the end of my driveway
on busy Illinois Rt. 176 in Crystal Lake and bear my own
witness. Maybe I will call the Northwest
Herald and tip them off to the action of a crazy old man in a cowboy
hat. Maybe they will cover it. Maybe
they won’t. I’ll be there either
way. Honk if you drive by.
I invite others
like me to do the same. If your house is
not on as busy a street as mine, amble over to some nearby intersection and pass a couple of pleasant hours. Someone is bound to see you.
Meanwhile I am
so glad young people are taking up where we geezers are leaving off.
After all, the future belongs to you!
