Striking While the Climate Is Hot
A look at the rise of 'the Climate Kids' | Issue 10, March 8, 2019
ONE-MINUTE TAKEAWAY: Greta Thunberg’s youngster Swedish climate strike is all grown up and comes to the U.S. on Friday March 15, as American youth walk out to protest climate change in action. | But ‘kids’n’climate change’ hit the American courts way back in 2015 with Juliana v. United States, which seeks to block the U.S. government from continuing to support fossil fuels. | Climate change is ‘a generational injustice,’ says EndClimateSilence.org. | And what happens when you don’t talk about the fire …. starts with the letter ‘a.’
ONE | Striking While the Climate is Hot
As of 03.08.19, these were planned student climate strikes March 15. Click here to interact with the map and plug in a zip code to find strikes across the United States.
How many American students will follow Greta Thunberg’s footsteps and march from class Friday, March 15? Tens of thousands of students in Europe have emulated the 16-year-old Swede, who began a weekly school strike in August 2018, to protest inaction on climate change in Sweden (See Issue 7, “The Kids Are All Right”). Thunberg’s message —Skolstrejk för klimatet (School strike for the climate)—will be heeded across America on March 15 (track just where at www.youthclimatestrikeus.org.)
You know things are serious when the serious folk at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists give their website over to the strike’s lead organizers. A 03.07.19 article by three 16-year-olds and a 13-year-old (Maddy Fernands, Isra Hirsi, Haven Coleman, and Alexandria Villaseñor) is titled “Adults won’t take climate change seriously. So we, the youth, are forced to strike”:
We, the youth of America, are fed up with decades of inaction on climate change. On Friday, March 15, young people like us across the United States will strike from school. We strike to bring attention to the millions of our generation who will most suffer the consequences of increased global temperatures, rising seas, and extreme weather. But this isn’t a message only to America. It’s a message from the world, to the world, as students in dozens of countries on every continent will be striking together for the first time.
Thirty years ago, climate scientist James Hansen warned Congress about climate change, yet decades later the fossil fuel industrial complex continues to deluge the environment with greenhouse gasses. The student strikers-to-be note:
Now, according to the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report on global temperature rise, we have only 11 years to prevent even worse effects of climate change. And that is why we strike.
TWO | “60 Minutes” of ‘Climate Kids’
“I still trust science more than I trust older generations that tell me that I'm wrong,” says Jayden Foytlin, one of the “climate kids” in Juliana v. United States. (Photo from CBSnews.com website)
If it seems like under-20 climate activists sprang full-born into the Mediaverse in the past six months, think twice. Consider Juliana v. United States, filed in 2015. The case (which the Trump administration has mightily resisted) is a suit against the federal government on behalf of youth who want the courts to block continued government support of fossil fuels.
Steve Kroft and “60 Minutes” recently devoted a segment to the case of 21 “climate kids,” who want you to know they’re not just adult props. Here’s climate kid Jayden Foytlin, a 15-year-old from Rayne, Louisiana. Her home was walloped by a 2016 storm that dumped 18 inches of rain on their town in just 48 hours.
"To the people that think that I'm brainwashed, I just usually say I have encountered climate change firsthand," Foytlin said. "And although I am 15, I still know science. I still trust science more than I trust older generations that tell me that I'm wrong."
The suit asserts 10 U.S. presidents going back 50 years were warned of the freight train of climate change. The next oral arguments in Juliana v. United States are set for June in Portland, Oregon. “60 Minute” producer Draggan Mihailovich, who reported the story with Kroft, said the case shifts climate change from conservative versus liberals—and refocuses it to a debate between young and old.
"I think kids 10 to 30, they're a lot more concerned about climate change than people in my generation or older. For us old folks, we're underestimating a little bit how important the climate change issue is to that generation."
THREE | ‘A Generational Injustice’
As a post-newspaperman, I appreciate organizations that hold the media’s feet to the (rising) heat on climate change. EndClimateSilence.org is dedicated “to helping the media link stories about climate-change impacts to climate change itself.” In a recent tweet praising the “60 Minutes” report, the group used a striking phrase that deserves to enter the global climate change lexicon:
FOUR | ‘Growing Energy for Meaningful Action’
Speaking of the federal government, Dan Rather made a comment recently that drew an interesting parallel between the rise of climate change awareness and the early days of the Civil Rights Movement, from one who was on the ground then as a reporter:
“I can feel growing energy for meaningful action on climate change that's not fully registering with official Washington. Is it similar to the early days of Civil Rights when one felt tremors of change before the big earthquake of justice shook the nation? Let's certainly hope so.”
FIVE | ‘Don’t Talk About the Fire, It Makes People Feel Bad’
There is precious little lightness in covering climate change’s ebb and flow in articles and social media. What little lightness there is is shot through with gallows humor. Yet this @sarahhendzior tweet darkly manages to encapsulate in a single tweet the last 15 to 20 years of climate change news and views:
PS | You Promised Cartoons
I did. Please pass this issue forward if it was forwarded to you. And subscribe at changingclimatetimes.substack.com. Be well! | Douglas John Imbrogno, Changing Climate Times Curator and Concierge