I posted this elsewhere but I feel it is important enough to merit here as well as global warming has become the number problem of the 21st century.
September 20-27 will be a week of student strikes for climate action around the world.
There are already 3,395 student strikes for climate action scheduled globally for the Sept. 20-27th. The following map shows their location on every continent, including Antarctica.
https://fridaysforfuture.ca/event-map/
This set of student strikes is expected to exceed the 1.5 million student strikers for climate action that occurred on March 15th.
The global mass day of action will take place on Friday 20 September, three days before the United Nations climate summit in New York.
It follows strikes in March this year in which 150,000 people marched in Australia and 1.5 million took part worldwide.
Organisers expect next week’s global strikes will be bigger and, this time there will be a much stronger presence from unions, workers and companies that have signed up to strike in solidarity with the young activists.
Here’s a guide to what’s happening.
Where will the strikes take place?
Strikes are planned in 120 countries across the world including almost 100 locations across Australia. ...
“This massive day of action is going to be fundamental towards advocating for more efficient action on climate change,” Evan Meneses, a 17-year-old organiser for the Adelaide strike, said. He said this was especially the case for Australia “given there is very little concrete evidence to suggest we’re achieving what was laid out in the Paris agreement”. There’s something that really connects with people when people as young as eight or 13 are advocating for action on the climate crisis because people that young are not the ones who should be having to [do so].”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/sep/14/going-to-the-streets...
Aware that Montreal has been one of the world's strongest cities in supporting Student Strikes for Climate Action, Greta Thunberg, the autistic 15 year old girl who started what started a global movement in August 218 by protesting outside Swedish Parliament alone about political inaction on climate change (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greta_Thunberg), has agreed to attend Montreal's student strike on September 27th.
Quebec Solidaire co-leader Mannon Massé has asked that Thunberg be allowed to speak to Quebec's National Assembly, although the Speaker has not ruled on the issue.
Climate change is now the number three issue in the 2019 Canadian election campaign 29%, behind only the cost of living at 35% and health care at 34%, according to an Abacus poll this month. (https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/climate-change-canada-election-2019_...)
16-year-old Swedish activist Greta Thunberg holds a placard reading "School strike for the climate" during a manifestation against climate change outside the Swedish parliament in Stockholm, Sweden November 30, 2018.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/greta-thunberg-1.5275586
https://globalnews.ca/news/5825359/greta-thunberg-climate-march-montreal/
This is a great speech. We need to look past climate change as a tool to fix our political system.
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/greta-thunberg-congress-speech-climate-change-crisis-dream-a9112151.html
Since Tuesday of this week the number of Student Strikes for Climate Change scheduled from September 20-27th around the world has grown from 3,395 to 4,118 in more than 150 countries. This set of student strikes is expected to exceed the 1.5 million student strikers for climate action that occurred on March 15th.
Student Strikes for Climate Action come just before the United Nations meeting for the Climate Action Summit which will be held on September 23, where countries are supposed to ramp up their ambitions to dramatically cut greenhouse gases under the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement. A second worldwide strike is planned for September 27.
Rabble outlines the reason for Canadians to strike for climate action:
http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/views-expressed/2019/09/20-reasons-strike
In Vancouver 100,000 marched in the Student Strike for Climate Action. I attended the protest there were many chants of
"No Trudeau Pipeline, Not Now Not Ever" and
"What do we want?"
"Climate justice"
"When do we want it?
"Now."
https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/live-vancouver-demonstrators-jo...
More than 300,000 people attended the Montreal Student Strike for Climate Action march. Trudeau was heckled extensively for buying the Trans Mountain pipeline and his brown/blackface costumes in the past.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-canadians-take-to-streets...
Greta Thunberg has received heavy criticism, been called mentally ill because she is on the autism spectrum, including from Canada's Maxime Bernier, and even had death threats from extreme right-wingers in her fight against climate change. She is not the only young person being attacked because of their support of climate action.
This url describes the death threats against Greta Thunberg: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QChDcw09QCk
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/zahrahirji/greta-thunberg-climate-t...
Is Greta Thunberg just another example of our Reality TV syndrome?
Every time I see something about Greta Thunberg I read that "she's young!". "She's 16!". Okay...That's the big hook? We know there are people who have devoted their adult lives to fighting climate change and pushing others to recognize it for the danger it is, but they're boring. They're not "a 16 year old girl!". They're ignored.
Don't get me wrong. I think she's pretty awesome and I think she's doing an amazing job, but I can't help but think about the mechanics behind it. Excluding me I'd guess members here know more about climate change than she does. So why her?
Is she a "prophet" like David Suzuki suggests? Or is she being catapulted to stardom by a society that's always looking for the next new young face to obsess over for a couple weeks or months before moving on to the next in thing? I'm sure Greta Thunberg is being bombarded with sponsors. Under armor and Nike fighting to see which brand they can try and show her wearing on TV. What brand of shoes does Greta Thunberg wear? I need to own the same ones. And it's entertainment to see who this 16 year old girl calls out, did you see what she said about Trump? lol
I hope her stardom is more than a fad and people become more involved in fighting climate change than going to a protest and posting their selfies about it on facebook.
She and her generation understand that, unlike many of us who have had a chance to live lives, get jobs, travel, get married, have children etc that they may never have those chances or those chances, on the current trajectory, look very different than what we have experienced. For most of us, it's theoretical. For her and her generation, it's personal.
Did you see the crowds in the streets all over the world on Friday? The big success of this movement is that it actually got people off Facebook and into the streets, which is where change happens. This was built on the first climate strikes that hit last March, and will only grow bigger from here.
You are trivializing both what Greta Thunberg has helped activate in terms of fighting global warming and the massive assault, including death threats on her and other young well-known protesters by the extreme right. You accuse her of trying to make money through corporate sponsorship off the Student Strike for Climate Action campaign without a shred of evidence, which is the same strategy employed by the fossil fuel industry (https://www.climaterealityproject.org/blog/climate-denial-machine-how-fo...), its climate denying researchers like Willie Soon who the oil companies paid over $1,200,00 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_Soon), its PR flunkies hired from the cigarette industry (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/tobacco-and-oil-industries-us...), and the alt-right (https://jewishcurrents.org/what-happens-when-alt-right-believes-climate-...).
This is what I am referring to:
There is nothing wrong with him attending the demonstration and making a political speech, but the optics of this are just awful.
Aristotleded24 I appreciate you taking my post seriously thank you.
Those are very uplifting things to say. I hope you're right. Without trying to sound too disparaging, her generation also see something on the internet and race to try and and be included. Like the crazy youtube challanges we keep seeing. (hot peppers, biting tide laundry soap pods, choking each other until someone passes out, swallowing spoons of cinnamon, little older generation getting out of moving cars to dance).
I mention that because I'm hessitant to fall into this "they're so woke, they get it! We have to listen to teenagers!" following. I
I did and it's pretty damn awesome to see. I couldn't believe how many people got involved, again it's a very uplifting thing to see. I wouldn't agree it got people off facebook, people just logged in, streamed and facebooked from the protest but I get what you mean. It got people out of the house and 'doing something' so that's a huge win.
But what comes next? What's the next step? The Liberals declared a climate emergency, which everyone cheered about. Then they bought a pipeline. I'm excited to see what happens next. I hope there's some kind of plan to move from marches in the street to governments actually doing something. Know what I mean?
Yea. It's fucking disgusting how people treat each other online. Hell I've had someone here tell me they hoped I stepped on a land mine. I have young kids in my house and I'm constantly vetting Youtube and online content. People think it's funny to take a kids show or kid videos on YouTube (how to make slime) and splice in porn or swearing or dead animals. My daughter wanted to make her own youtube channel to stream an online kids game she plays- not a chance.
I don't think Greta is being singled out because of her views per say, getting death threats online seems to be the standard for our society now. Again, it's super disgusting. You'll get death threats whether you're a Liberal, Conservative, NDP or Green party. Pro-life, pro-choice. Hunter, non-hunter. Climate change advocate, vegan, Muslim, Christian, Xbox or Playstation, you name it. That doesn't make it okay or acceptable. How do you combat that?
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You are trivializing both what Greta Thunberg has helped activate in terms of fighting global warming and the massive assault, including death threats on her and other young well-known protesters by the extreme right.[/quote]
I certainly hope I'm not. If I am it's not my intention. Depending on how you characterize what constitutes as achievement she's surely did more "for the world" than I have. I really respect what she's been able to do.
That's not what I said at all. I never accused her of looking for corporate sponsorship. I do think companies are like blood hounds and the minute they see someone like Greta pop up in the news they're climbing over each other to try and put a logo on her. Nothing to do with her but says a lot about or corporate and materialistic society.
Canadian Indigenous water activist Autumn Peltier addresses UN on clean water
I thought this discussion on Counterpunch was very interesting. For me the most exciting aspect of the climate strikes is the attempt to make the contradiction between the necessary and endless expansion capitalism requires and the finite resources we can expand "into" obvious and urgent. The climate strikes have the potential to become a truely anti-capitalist force for change. Though I must confess I am not optimistic they will.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/09/30/veritable-uprising-or-the-faux-r...
"But this is because there is a real fear, reinforced by example, of how powerful disruptive protest can be. Throwing a wrench into the gears actually gets attention and action. It also shows how brutal and ruthless the current order is against anyone who stands against the status quo in this manner. Occupy and Standing Rock are a couple of those examples. A flood of violence and intimidation washed over those uprisings. So with that in mind, there is a conformity to how many people in so-called Western democracies behave when it comes to protesting power today. And certainly this is what the ruling class wishes. Accepted discourse and dissent within the designated boundaries. There have been a flurry of laws since those protests that seek to criminalize dissent and maintain these boundaries, even branding certain activities or associations as terrorism.
The Mouvement des Gilets Jaunes, or Yellow Vest Movement, in contrast to today’s climate demonstrations reveal how the neoliberal state treats those who dissent in a way that upends power structures. I am not referring to Yellow Vests in Canada or some other places which have taken on a racist, fascistic or xenophobic character, but in France where working people took to the streets, walked out of jobs, and shut down the machinery of society. It was met with breathtaking violence by Macron’s government, and scant mass media coverage. So without a doubt, when people confront actual power structures they will be met with the aggressive repression of the state, not be escorted and protected by police because they got the right permits for free speech zones on the weekends. And their struggle will not get put in glossy photos on the cover of corporate owned magazines."
...
On Greta:
"Up to the present, she has followed a vague and wonky storyline — thus she has not, as of yet, been considered a threat to capitalist power and has been regarded by the powerful as being relegated to the role of Climate Muppet; hence, she has been provided wide exposure in the capitalist media. To wit, the observation has been posited, if she presented a threat to the status quo of capitalist imperium and the US military (the latter is a major contributor to global wide pollution and the Climate Crisis) she would have remained in obscurity."
Mobo: I think the above comment on Greta is perhaps too cynical and pessimistic. But there is a stark difference between the media's treatment of the climate strikes and more overt anti-capitalist movements of the past like Occupy or the Yellow Vests. Why is that?
Trudeau setting up Canada for global ridicule over his climate change antics.
Greta Thunberg’s enemies are right to be scared. Her new political allies should be too
Liberal leaders line up to praise her, yet their inaction on the climate crisis shows they are not really listening to her message
‘Greta Thunberg styles herself as a climate populist: she invokes a clear moral vision, a corrupt, unresponsive system, an ‘us’ and a ‘them’.’ Thunberg at a climate rally in Montreal. Photograph: Valerie Blum/EPA
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/sep/30/greta-thunberg-enemies-inaction-climate-crisis
Paladin1 wrote:
I am glad to see you the importance of dealing with climate change. However some of your earlier comments seemed to point in the opposite direction.
You left the evidence that I presented after "shred of evidence" that the fossil fuel industry has been a widespread forty year campaign to deny global warming is happening, to attack those who bring it to the public's attention, and to trivialize the issue when they are forced to admit to it. We cannot afford to trivialize the problem anymore. More young people understand that because their futures depend on that for more than boomers' futures do.
Thanks. The cult of climate change really turned me off to learning more about climate change initially. It took patience and level headed posters and commentators to really start opening my eyes and listening. Glad I did too.
I probably do come across as looking in the opposite direction at times. I think playing the devils advocate and nay-saying help with critical thinking and testing ones argument.
Sorry about that, very much unintentional.
It only stands to reason fossil fuel industry would do their best to deny global warming. Lots of lost money, jobs, golden pensions etc.. I'm not surprised in the least.
The Yellow Vests movement in France was very contradictory from the outset. I am most certainly against Macron's violent repression of it - and many other social movements - but their initial demands were certainly not fully progressive. They were from certain popular sectors outside the major cities and their immediate suburbs, and they were calling for lower taxes on polluting fuel, not for better public transport in their areas.
Young and indigenous people around the world have taken climate action to another level.
http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/david-suzuki/2019/10/we-owe-greta-and-yo...
Greta Thunberg arrived in Calgary today to protest against Alberta's fossil fuel industry. On Friday, she will be leading a Friday for Future Strike in Edmonton. Of course the fossil fuel industry fought back. Many indigenous people from Alberta First Nations are planning to take part in the protests.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/greta-thunberg-alberta-visit-clim...
Kenney and the oil industry continue to pump out their fossil fuel propaganda as Greta Thunberg visited Alberta.
https://www.nationalobserver.com/2019/10/17/opinion/greta-has-landed-ken...
Many First Nations people participated in Student Strike for climate action in Edmonton on Friday, as they have often suffered the most from the environmental damage caused by the Alberta Tar Sands because many of them live so close to extraction sites.
Greta Thunberg was at the Friday for Futures climate strike in Vancouver last Friday outside the Vancouver Art Gallery morning. Between 8,000 and 10,000 attended. First Nations outlined their plans to stop Trans Mountain. Ten of the fifteen youth who sued the federal government in BC court on this day attended the protest and described how climate change is threatening their futures. This was the fourth climate protest in the last month in Vancouver.
https://www.narcity.com/news/ca/bc/vancouver/vancouver-climate-strike-wi...
The four principles of climate justice:
https://newint.org/features/2009/01/01/principles-climate-justice
On November 29th, as global climate action strikes were getting under way, climat action leaders Greta Thunberg of Sweden, Luisa Neubauer of Germany, and Angela Valenzuela of Chile wrote an op-ed to the UN Climate Change Conference occurring in Madrid next week as student strikes continued.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/11/29/we-see-no-other-options-you...
In South Africa
https://www.columbian.com/news/2019/nov/29/global-climate-protests-ahead...
On Friday November 29th, there was another set global student strikes for climate action with 630,000 strikers coming out in Germany alone. Around the world there were 2,300 student strikes in 152 countries. The strikes focused on the links between Black Friday consumer capitalism on the day when there is the greatest level of retail sales and global warming.
https://time.com/5741593/black-friday-climate-strike/
More on student strikes for climate action around the world below:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/nov/29/hundreds-of-thousand...
A large crowd protested at the student strike for climate action in Toronto
https://www.blogto.com/city/2019/11/toronto-climate-strike-black-friday-...
Victoria BC also held a student strike for climate action on November 29th that focused on the Green New Deal and ending BC's LNG projects.
https://vancouverisland.ctvnews.ca/student-activists-occupy-downtown-vic...
There were 500,000 protesters at the climate strike in Madrid led by Greta Thunberg on Friday where the UN COP 25 climate change conference was being held.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/12/06/even-500000-march-madrid-gr...
Yukon Regional Chief Kluane Adamek, who is taking part in the Local Communities and Indigenous Peoples Platform of the UN COP 25 Climate Change Conference in Madrid, answered questions on the concerns of indigenous and others living in northern Canada just before she left for COP 25.
https://www.opencanada.org/features/five-questions-with-yukon-regional-c...
Indigenous youth from around the world are demanding action on climate change and social justice issues at COP 25 in Madrid.
https://www.pri.org/stories/2019-12-05/indigenous-youth-take-global-stag...