IN THEIR OWN WORDS. TICK TOCK THE CLIMATE CLOCK, PART THREE

Our friend M is the Director of the Federal Environment Agency (Umweltbundesamt - UBA) located in Dessau.  UBA supports the Federal Environment Ministry in Berlin with environmental research and policy proposals.  An important task of UBA is raising public awareness of environmental issues.  To that end, M asked if I was aware of Greta Thunberg (pictured above), the 16-year-old Swedish girl organizing Friday school climate strikes.  I wasn’t at the time, but after last Friday, I think almost everyone is now.

Greta skipped school one Friday last year to sit outside the Swedish parliament with a hand-lettered sign that read SKOLSTREJK FÖR KLIMATET (school strike for climate).  Almost a year on, she has been nominated by three Norwegians for the Nobel Peace Prize and her sign, translated into dozens of languages, has ignited Friday climate strikes in schools in more than 70 countries.   On March 15, hundreds of thousands of students from around the world walked out of class to demand their politicians urgently act on climate change because, quite simply:  There is no Planet B.

 

Here’s what these kids are saying, in their own words.


Greta Thunberg, 16, Stockholm:  “We are facing the greatest existential crisis humanity has ever faced.  And yet it has been ignored.  You who have ignored it know who you are.”  

 

Jean Hinchcliffe, 14, Sydney:  “I have been really frustrated and really angry about the fact I don’t have a voice in politics and I don’t have a voice in the climate conversation when my politicians are pretty much refusing to do anything.”

Srijani Datta, 16, Delhi:  “Most of us are 16-17 and we are going to turn 18 soon. We are going to be eligible for voting.  If you can’t give us fresh air and water, you will not get our votes.”

Xander De Vries, 20, Sydney:  “It’s our time to rise up.  We don’t have a lot of time left; it’s us who have to make a change.”

Shagun Kumari, 13, Delhi: “My eyes hurt from pollution. My shirt gets dirty from dust.  I want fresh air that won’t harm my lungs and clean water to drink so that I don’t keep falling sick.”

Ten Maekawa, 20, Tokyo:  “What do we want?  Climate justice!  When do we want it?  Now!”

Charles Rickwood, 18, Sydney:  “If current trends in the environment continue, we’ll see the one, two degrees increase in our ocean then it will simply become unsustainable and we could lose the entire Great Barrier Reef.”

Isra Hirsi, 16, Minneapolis, MN:  “Yes, we are at a dark moment in our history, but we are the light that can bring change.”  (Isra Hirsi is the daughter of Rep. Ilhan Omar.)

Feliquan Charlemagne, 17, Ocala, FL:  “I’m actually from the U.S. Virgin Islands.  I moved here when I was 2 months old because my area’s economy and the surrounding islands continue to take hits due to climate change.  And that’s not even a sustainable solution, because Florida’s going to be one of the areas that’s hit the most.” 

Isabella Fallahi, 15, Indianapolis, IN:  “This is not a Republican issue; this is not a Democrat issue.  This is a human rights issue.”

Mishka Banuri, 18, Salt Lake City, UT:  “The whole point of the strike is to kind of disrupt normal, day-to-day life, because we want people to realize that this impending crisis, the climate crisis, is not normal.  And it should not be normalized.”

Saraphina Forman, Northampton, MA:  “When I came across Greta Thunberg, the way she told it just made so much sense.  That we can’t really just go on living our normal lives, going to school, putting up with everything, when we know there’s such an immediate threat on our hands.”

Brendan Ireland, 18, Novi, MI:  “People who deny climate change are getting rarer and rarer.  But it’s almost so big of a problem, it’s easy to ignore and almost push away.  Don’t think about it because it’s so scary. ”

Aditi Narayanan, 16, Phoenix, AZ:  “I’m going to be real with you — I feel like activism without an actual goal isn’t really much of a point.  In Phoenix, we’re backing specific local bills and specific legislation.  We have concrete plans of what we want to accomplish.”

Rosalie Daval, 17, Jackson, WY:  “I think a lot of people in Wyoming are really hesitant to consider something environmentally related because there’s this large fear about the impact on the economy.  So we’re trying to be realistic.  We’re focusing our protest on asking our representatives to consider investing in sustainable energy because it’s more tailored to our state.” 

Abie LaPorta, 17, State College, PA:  “People who don’t want me to strike or who argue against the strike have said to me, ‘You need to go to school.’ But why is school important?  It’s important for your future.  We won’t have a livable future if we don’t enact change now.”

And here's what some of the so-called "adults in the room" are saying, in their own words.

Australia’s education minister, Dan Tehan:  “Students leaving school during school hours to protest is not something that we should encourage.” 


UK’s education secretary, Damian Hinds claimed the disruption increased teachers’ workloads.

The conservative, pro-business FDP leader in Germany, Christian Lindner, criticized school day protests, saying:  "Children and adolescents cannot be expected to see all the global connections, the technically meaningful and the economically feasible solutions. That's a thing for professionals."

Prime Minister Theresa May criticized the school walkout as a “waste of lesson time.”

President Trump tweeted nothing specific about the Friday school climate strikes.  However, he did tweet this:  "How is the Paris Environmental Accord working out for France? After 18 weeks of rioting by the Yellow Vest Protesters, I guess not so well!  In the meantime, the United States has gone to the top of all lists on the Environment."

Yeah, sure.  The Top Ten List of Climate Deniers.

This is not a drill.

Keep it real!

Marilyn