What do I think, What can I do?

Posts tagged ‘activism’

Climate Activism

Time goes fast. Three weeks ago I was in the most intense #FridayforClimate, at least in my personal experience. I was with my older son and I finished with mixed feelings happy to see more people than expected, hopeful for the strength transmitted by young people and for the worldwide impact but worried by the lack of focus, at least in the demonstration I was. I wrote about it.

I am not able to make a reasonable prediction about this movement started by Greta Thunberg. Sometimes I see this personalization as a weakness sometimes as a strength, we all need models, and we all follow more easily people than ideas. The problem is when this model people is not able to meet the expectations. For the moment, Greta continues to get coverage and leads. For me the planet wide scope is key but the young people leadership is quite interesting too. They are going to live more time with the consequences of climate change, they have more personal reasons to be worried. Like in the judicial case of  “Juliana v US,” the lawsuit filed by youth plaintiffs against the United States claiming that climate change violates their rights. I do not think courts will solve this problem but those cases will generate political and social activism.

To get a successful climate change mitigation (the technical name to reduce the emissions and climate change) we need this activism because changing our energy production, transportation and industry will not be easy and will produce losers. This kind of sacrifices are intrinsically difficult for politicians, they can produce strong backfire like yellow vests movement in France. And activism helps for that, it helps a lot.

#EarthHour in 2019 (March 30th)

Another form of activism, not so young, was last Saturday’s #EarthHour, it is quite old, in fact, from 2004. 6 years ago I mentioned itand last Saturday I went to the local meeting with my family. We were not many this time, and I did not check if the power consumption effect was noticeable, but it still is another wolrdwide action, with many institutions involved and with a clear message in favour of energy use reduction, or, in other words, efficiency. I like this message, we need of concretion, and even more we need a world wide claim of concrete and urgent actions like a carbon tax, or stopping coal use, or reaching some reasonable co2 emissions per capita in a defined time. Undoubtedly, those campaigns can help, even more if they converge and maintain pressure until next cop meetings or elections.

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climate activism

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Green New deal and School strikes

From Pixabay (jplenio)

In the last times these two movements are attracting much attention in climate change.

Green New Deal is a strong political movement in USA. A couple of good explanations here: in New York Times and from Australia in Skeptical Science. USA and China are the two main economies David Appel likes it but he would prefer to separate climate change politics from other social politics. After reading it I partially agree but I prefer to connect with the next interesting movement.

On the other hand Greta Thunberg -the young girl that addressed the United Nations Climate Change Conference and in January 2019, having just turned 16,  and was invited to talk to the World Economic Forum at Davos- has started and inspired a school strike against climate change. It has become a really strong young people movement worldwide and it deserves a post itself.

Both are important because have made mainstream climate change, both have helped feel the urgency of climate action that scientists are long ago explaining, both are reaching worldwide scope. At the same time they are different, Green New Deal is very political and School strikes are mostly social. Green New Deal comes from American politics and School strikes come from the cold northern Europe.

So I am very happy to hear in the news that climate change is a big problem and we have to act as humankind. This was really necessary both at political and social level. What I miss is concreteness in the message. It would be nice to focus on asking to close coal power stations, install yearly a good amount of renewables, support for governments speaking about end of fuel vehicles,… And it would be really great to ask a worldwide carbon tax that is one politics that would move many others. Concreteness is imperative as we need fast action.

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climate activism, Climate change and politics

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