Many Students Doing Climate Strike: “It’s our future that’s at stake”

by Duane Nichols on September 19, 2019

There is NO Planet “B” ...!

US students plan to skip school Friday to fight climate ‘emergency’

From an Article by Elizabeth Weise, USA Today, Sept. 19, 2019

SAN FRANCISCO — Tens of thousands of high school students in cities nationwide plan to skip classes Friday to attend Global Climate Strike marches calling for immediate action to end climate change. They will be part of a global joint protest aimed directly at the adults who they say are ignoring the destruction of the planet.

“We have to treat climate change as what it is — an emergency,” said Audrey Maurine Xin Lin, an 18-year-old who’s been one of the coordinators of the Boston school strike and march.

The events come out of a groundswell of worry on the part of young people about the future of the planet. Students in more than 800 locations around the United States plan to go on strike from school for the day to attend protests.

“It’s going to be a really, really powerful day, the launch of a new era of climate movement. This is just the beginning for us,” said Katie Eder, 19, who is the executive director of the Future Coalition, a youth-led non-profit helping the groups coordinate.

No future, no children: Teens refusing to have kids until there’s action on climate change

The protests are timed to begin a week of activism at the United Nations, including a Youth Climate Summit on Saturday and a UN Climate Action Summit on Monday. A second strike is planned for Friday, Sept. 27.

Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, 16, put a face on the global movement beginning in August 2018 when she began skipping school on Fridays to stand outside the Swedish parliament holding a sign protesting inaction on climate change. She came to New York on a solar-powered sailboat to attend the strike in New York City and then the summit.

The movement is not led by her, but a broad group of young people who say they are frightened for their futures and angry that adults have done so little. Unlike the Vietnam War protests, which were mostly college students, the organizers of these events are mostly high school and even some middle school students.

“I want to emphasize that our entire organizing team is under 20. Young people and students have really been leading this,” said Lin. She and four other teens were on a press call Wednesday describing the work they’re doing and why it’s important.

The young people said they want politicians to act as if the world’s on fire and begin curbing carbon emissions and taking the fight against global warming seriously.

Greta Thunberg, 16-year-old climate change activist, has gained an international following as she coordinates youth walk outs and talks to legislators around the world. Globally, students have participated in the ‘Fridays for Future’ climate change strikes, following Greta’s lead. Get to know the teenage activist in photos.

Meet Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old making waves on climate change:

“We won’t have the chance to make the changes we need to if we don’t have the courage to fight,” said Dulce Belen Ceballos Arias, 18, from Redwood City, California. She is helping plan the San Francisco march.

“I want to have children of my own and I want them to have a life better than me and I don’t want that chance to be taken away from them,” she said.

Young people aren’t the only ones getting involved. Multiple companies, mostly on the smaller side, are shutting down for the day so employees can attend local marches. They include Ben & Jerry’s, Patagonia, Burton and SodaStream.

But while the students say they’re happy to have adults march and get involved, for them this is personal. “It’s our future that’s at stake,” said Gabriella Marchesani, 17, a Miami Strike youth leader.

For her, Friday’s action isn’t just some small march to give kids a chance to cut class. “This is a historic commitment that we’re going to look back on and say, ‘That’s the day that youth made a statement that we’re not going to give up,’” she said.

Photo — Youth climate activists prepare to march to the White House on Friday, Sept. 13, 2019. Swedish teenage activist Greta Thunberg also attended the protest.

There is a rapidly growing awareness of rapidly growing climate change!

{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }

Al Gore September 19, 2019 at 9:00 pm

From the MSNBC program “All In” With Chris Hayes on Sept 19th:

Rüdiger “Rudi” Dornbusch was a German economist who worked for most of his career in the United States. Dornbusch’s law states that “Crises take longer to arrive than you can possibly imagine, but when they do come, they happen faster than you can possibly imagine.”

See Also: Wikipedia

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Ben Finley November 14, 2019 at 9:30 am

Teen climate activist is leaving US, setting sail for Spain

From an Article by Ben Finley, Associated Press, November 11, 2019

HAMPTON, Va. (AP) — Swedish teen climate activist Greta Thunberg will leave North America and begin her return trip across the Atlantic on Wednesday aboard a 48-foot (15-meter) catamaran sailboat whose passengers include an 11-month-old baby.

The boat leaves little to no carbon footprint, boasting solar panels and a hydro-generators for power. It also has a toilet, unlike the boat on which she sailed from the United Kingdom to New York in August . That one only had a bucket.

“There are countless people around the world who don’t have access to a toilet,” she said about the upgrade. “It’s not that important. But it’s nice to have.”

Thunberg spoke Tuesday inside the tight confines of the catamaran, named La Vagabonde, as it was docked in Hampton, Virginia, near the Chesapeake Bay’s mouth. She’s hitching a ride to Spain in hopes of attending a United Nations climate meeting in Madrid in early December.

The owners of the boat are Riley Whitelum and Elayna Carausu, an Australian couple who have an 11-month-old son named Lenny. The family, which has a large online following, responded to Thunberg’s call on social media for a carbon-free ride to Europe. An expert sailor, Nikki Henderson, is also coming along.

The trip could take two to four weeks, and November is considered offseason for sailing across the Atlantic. As Thunberg spoke Tuesday, the temperature had dipped into the 30s as sleet turned into light snow.

But the 16-year-old, who refuses to fly because of the carbon price of plane travel, didn’t seem bothered. “I’m looking forward to it, just to be able to get away and recap everything and to just be disconnected,” she said.

Thunberg just finished a nearly three-month trip through North America, where she gave an impassioned speech before the United Nations and took part in climate strike rallies and protests from California to Colorado to North Carolina.

She’s become a symbol of a growing movement of young climate activists after leading weekly school strikes in Sweden that inspired similar actions in about 100 cities worldwide.

She’s also drawn criticism from conservative commentators in the U.S. as well as Russian President Vladimir Putin. But she brushed off the criticism during her round of back-to-back interviews in the catamaran on Tuesday, saying that yes, she is too young to be doing this.

“It should be the adults who take that responsibility,” Thunberg said. “But it feels like the adults and the people in power today are not.”

When she looks back on her time in the U.S. and Canada, Thunberg said the things that stick out the most include a glacier in Canada’s Jasper National Park that is destined to disappear “no matter what we do.”

A visit to the Standing Rock Indian Reservation, where there have been protests over a pipeline, also left an impact.

“I was actually quite surprised to see how bad the indigenous people have been treated,” she said. “They are the ones who are being impacted often the most and first by the climate and ecological crisis. And they are also the ones who are at the front line trying to fight it.”

She also was surprised at how much she was recognized. “There are always people who come up to me and ask for selfies and so on,” she said. “So, that really gives you an idea of how big the climate movement has reached.”

https://apnews.com/291af40129184751927618bef808121e

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Greta Thunberg December 30, 2019 at 10:30 pm

Greta Thunberg: ‘I Wouldn’t Have Wasted My Time’ Talking to President Trump

From Time Magazine, December 30, 2019

Greta Thunberg says that she “wouldn’t have wasted [her] time” talking to President Donald Trump about the threat of climate change if she had the opportunity to speak with him.

Since the 16-year-old Swedish activist has became known one of the world’s most powerful voices heralding the threat of climate change, the U.S. President has repeatedly criticized her.

After TIME named the teen Person of the Year earlier this month, Trump tweeted that Thunberg, who has spoken openly about her Asperger’s diagnosis, has “anger management issues” and should “go to a good old fashioned movie with a friend.” (Thunberg in turn changed her Twitter bio to troll the President. It read: “a teenager working on her anger management problem. Currently chilling and watching a good old fashioned movie with a friend.”)

Although Thunberg has built a reputation for speaking truth to power, and has spoken passionately about the threat of climate change to world leaders at the United Nations and elsewhere, she told the BBC in an interview on Monday that she doesn’t think talking to Trump would be worth the effort.

“Honestly I don’t think I would have said anything, because he’s obviously not listening to scientists and experts. Why would he listen to me?” Thunberg said.

During the interview, Thunberg also addressed the aggressive attacks she’s received from world leaders — including Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro.

“Those attacks are just funny, because they obviously don’t mean anything. I guess, of course it means something — it means they are terrified of young people bringing change which they don’t want. But that is just a proof that we are actually doing something. And that they see us as some kind of threat,” Thunberg said.

https://time.com/5756873/greta-thunberg-president-trump/

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