Given the importance of the issue and Nobel Peace Prize nominee Greta Thunberg's effectiveness at mobilising young people in support of her climate change fight, I knew there'd be a lot of young people striking worldwide last Friday. Unfortunately what should have been headline news was knocked off the top of the news cycle by the atrocious and reprehensible acts of a white supremacist in Christchurch, New Zealand. But let's collect our thoughts in this new week.
More than a million worldwide!
Yes, more than a million young (and possibly not that young) people went on strike worldwide to protest government inaction against climate change. The request was simple:
Greta requests that people strike infront of their closest town hall, every friday. With a sign, take a picture and post it with the hashtags
#Fridaysforfuture
#Climatestrike
And here was the response:
An estimated 1.4 million young people in 123 countries skipped school Friday to demand stronger climate policies in what may be one of the largest environmental protests in history.
As you can see from this map, the protests are happening worldwide.
Here's what the strike looked like in Sydney, Australia:
An aside - am I the only one who finds that Thanos poster on the right of the photo just a teeny bit chilling? Shades of the Gaia movement which promoted the idea there should only be about 2 billion of us humans on Planet Earth for life to be sustainable - and not obvious how we're supposed to get there in any way humanity would agree to. Yikes.
Anyway, back to inspiring stuff we should be able to do without killing off 6-7 billion of us. African students did their part:
Basically, stopping denialism is a good start.
There are some interesting messages in the signs these students are holding in London, England:
Greta Thunberg has indeed promoted the idea of changing the system if climate policies can't be changed within our existing political systems.
I'm a bit disappointed that those signs promoting system change are sponsored by the Socialist Worker - frankly, capitalism (the kind I've written about here that sees the Six Capitals as a framework for global governance and economic and environmental stewardship) and leveraging market forces are our best option for getting real system change entrenched. Any centralised efforts are truly doomed to fail. Look at how well socialist economies have handled pollution in the past. But system change, as Greta Thunberg has said, is what we need if we can't change climate policies within our current system.
Remember to do your bit each Friday! Let's keep up the pressure.
References
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greta_Thunberg
https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2019/3/15/18267156/youth-climate-strike-march-15-photos
https://www.fridaysforfuture.org/
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/mar/15/its-our-time-to-rise-up-youth-climate-strikes-held-in-100-countries
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/03/15/world/climate-strike-students/index.html
Other recent posts on this topic
https://steemit.com/cop24/@kiligirl/cop24-the-proceedings-begin-bad-news-and-good
https://steemit.com/globalwarming/@kiligirl/the-real-adult-in-the-room-is-still-the-teenager-greta-thunberg-at-the-world-economic-forum
https://steemit.com/gretathunberg/@kiligirl/who-is-greta-thunberg
https://steemit.com/fridaysforfuture/@kiligirl/striking-for-climate-justice
https://steemit.com/nobelpeaceprize/@kiligirl/greta-thunberg-has-been-nominated-for-the-nobel-peace-prize
