Let’s talk a little bit about the upcoming climate strike, climate justice, and climate (in)action.
The global climate strike, and Greta Thunberg herself, will be coming to Montreal this Friday, September 27th. The rally will begin at the George-Étienne Cartier statue in Parc Mont-Royal at noon. There will also be a demonstration beforehand at 11 am on Rue McTavish, hosted by Climate Justice Action McGill (C-JAM), to demand that McGill be held accountable and take action in the face of our current climate crisis. This is following Montreal’s first youth climate strike on March 15th, which drew over 150,000 students. From September 20-27th, students, young people, and working adults from more than 150 countries will join together to demand immediate action against the climate crisis from governments and those responsible for the current crisis. It’s a strike for climate justice.
So, what exactly is climate justice? The truth is, climate change is not merely an environmental issue. According to the United Nations page on climate justice, climate justice looks at the climate crisis through a human rights lens. Even though climate change is a global issue, it doesn’t affect everyone equally. It’s the poor, the marginalized, the sick, who are most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change like more extreme weather events, droughts, rising sea levels, heat waves, reduced food security…the list is wide-sweeping and alarming. The injustice lies in the fact that these vulnerable groups are also those who have contributed the least to climate change, and those who have the least power to control it. To top it all off, by delaying climate action for decades, those in power have effectively pushed the issue onto the younger generation—people who may not even have voting power yet, people whose futures are now in jeopardy before they could establish the necessary changes to address the climate crisis themselves.
Now this is where things get interesting. As you may know, a year ago, then 15-year old Greta Thunberg began striking outside of the Swedish Parliamentary building every Friday instead of going to school. She had been struck by the gravity of the world’s climate emergency, and this was her way of expressing her alarm to those in power. Slowly but surely, her #FridaysforFuture movement picked up momentum and spread to youth in other countries. What is striking about the movement is that it is being spearheaded by a young lady who very clearly wishes that she didn’t have to lead such a movement. It’s not that she finds the task burdensome, but rather, that there is something inherently flawed about the fact that she must take up such a role in the first place.
“This is all wrong. I shouldn’t be standing here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean. Yet you all come to me for hope? How dare you!” Thunberg declared at the UN Climate Action Summit just this past Monday. Why does it take the outcry of millions of young people for the world to understand that things need to change? The science has been around (and known) for decades. The issue of climate change comes up again and again at every election. And yet, governments have failed to bring forth the kinds of policies and action that are needed to avert an irreversible climate disaster.
Despite the expression of anger and disappointment during her speech at the UN Climate Action Summit, she was met with applause from world leaders. However, despite the urgency and emotional pleas in her speech, there were no ground-breaking pledges made by world leaders, the kind that the IPCC Special Report from 2018 deems are necessary to limit global warming to 1.5˚C above pre-industrial levels. The clock is ticking.
Can we sympathize with these world leaders? It’s certainly no easy task to take care of the needs of an entire country and implement policies that everyone agrees with. However, more than using their power to people-please, world leaders should be using their power to do what is right. Here, the cost of the wrong decision is the lives of the vulnerable and the bright and wonderful futures of our young people. And if it takes a 16-year old to point world leaders in the right direction, maybe they need to take a moment and figure out what is causing them to become so blind. I say blind, because as Thunberg put it, “If you fully understood the situation and still kept on failing to act, then you would be evil.”
Information obtained from:
https://globalclimatestrike.net
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2018/07/embark-essay-climate-change-pollution-revkin/
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