On 20th September, the world will pause for the global youth and earth climate strikes. We want to support young people all over the country and around the world who are calling for urgent climate action. At the RSPB we are encouraging our staff, volunteers and members to take part too, in whatever way suits them best: joining peaceful climate protests, running climate-themed activities with the public on our reserves, show-casing the amazing work we do to restore nature and tackle climate change, or sharing their support on social media and at events across the country.
With all that in mind I'm really pleased to host this blog from Grace spelling out why she is compelled to take part, to make sure her own voice is heard.
I’m Grace, I’m sixteen and I live in Devon. Along with others across the UK and the world, I will be taking part in the Global Strike for Climate on September 20th. I will be giving up some of my education to join the protest in Exeter.
It’s quite a strange feeling when you realise as a child or young person that the adults aren’t just going to 'sort everything out'. I remember thinking that this would happen; when I was seven and we had Walk to School Week and I wrote a poem about saving the polar bears – I really believed the adults were onto this! To some extent I also believed this after the 2015 Paris Agreement - that human-caused climate change would soon just be another historical case-study in a geography textbook, a problem solved.
Now I know this isn’t the case. The current chaos in global politics and recent reports from eminent scientists certainly paint a very different picture of where we are headed if we do not make a change. The adults do not have this situation under control.
Having no vote or voice can make young people feel powerless. News stories about extreme weather events, the extinction of species, the Pacific Garbage Patch, oil spills and the burning Amazon, create a sense of sadness, anger and guilt that all too often is not translated into action.
Greta Thunberg’s activism also inspired me to strike - I find her bravery empowering, and her blunt honesty challenging. I went to my first climate strike back in March because I wanted to take tangible action and join people working to bring about positive change.
I’m striking because our earth is at a tipping point and I believe it's essential that we act now. The report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released in October 2018 gave a twelve-year deadline in order to prevent global heating to an extent that would be catastrophic in terms of extreme weather and sea level rise. The impacts of climate breakdown are already beginning to be felt today, and often by those individuals, communities and nations who are the least likely to be able to mitigate these damaging effects. Meanwhile, our self-proclaimed ‘climate leaders’ in government continue to support the extraction of fossil fuels, development of fracking and emissions-intensive projects like the Heathrow expansion. They drastically under-estimate the scale of action required to avert a crisis.
I am striking because it feels like I must do something more than ‘always turning off the light-switch to save energy’. (True, lifestyle changes can definitely make a positive contribution to our environment. However, in a world where ‘green’, ethical choices are usually more expensive, it is unjust and unrealistic to place the responsibility solely at consumers’ feet.) Furthermore, in a world where just 100 companies are responsible for 71% of global emissions, individual lifestyle changes will simply not be enough. This is why coming together to demand large-scale systems change in terms of policy is what is needed to avert the crisis.
Since the movement began, real difference and progress has been made. When students skipped school to protest a lack of action, awareness or concern about the issue of the climate crisis earlier this year, we didn’t know that public awareness would soon have reached an all-time high. We didn’t know that the government (and many local councils) would have declared a Climate Emergency, putting pressure on them to deliver the substantial change that is required. And whilst so much more needs to be done, we now know that, in pushing for positive change, we really can challenge those in power to deliver.
I am striking because I want to have a say in the future of the world I’m growing up in. I’m really excited to see what September’s Global Strike will bring as, for the first time, young people and adults will be striking alongside one another. Young people, as those with the biggest stake in the future, have led this movement so far, but now in order to make a difference we need everybody who can to join us. In relation to the environmental breakdown that we’re witnessing, it is not only young people who can feel powerless with regards to making change - the future belongs to us all and the fight for climate justice should be absolutely everyone’s concern. A movement based on global, and inter-generational, solidarity, campaigning for something as universal as our planet's future has got to be a pretty powerful thing, and something worth listening to.
almost the most important thing we can do in the long run is have fewer children, especially in a high-consumption-per-head country like the UK. I hope all you youngsters (who will be the ones making those decisions) will think hard about that too.