Can Thunberg’s generation take protests to logical conclusion?

Greta Thunberg, the Swedish schoolgirl, delivered a hardhitting speech to the Climate Action Summit at the ongoing UN General Assembly in New York. In her speech, followed by global media and delivered to a full house of the leaders of the world, Thunberg didn’t mince her words when she lashed out at those who have let her generation and those to follow down through their pretenses and inaction on climate change, even while the crisis develops further and envelopes an increasing part of our lives. Thunberg has been in the limelight on climate change for over a year now — since she first missed school to protest outside the Swedish Parliament last August. Since then, she has inspired thousands of students, not just in Sweden or Europe, but across the world, as they formed a loose alliance known as “Fridays for Future,” where they organize regular demonstrations in cities all over the world, denouncing the global leaders for letting their generation down. Since her first protest, Thunberg has become a household name, and not just among those who deal with climate change or those who are worried about the fate of the world. She has become a regular fixture at key climate change meetings, including this week after she traveled to New York on a solar-powered boat.

It has been heartening to see how quickly a protest by a single teenager has snowballed into a global movement — and one that is rocking the boat of our current moribund leaders. Partly, of course, Thunberg and her fellow students from around the world owe the success of their protests to the power of social media in particular and the media in general.

But is the protest an end in itself or is the campaign something that should logically end when the world has taken enough proactive steps to curb carbon emissions to ensure that the rise in global temperatures is kept below the 1.5 degrees Celsius mark set by the Paris Agreement?

The battle to save the climate, as with any other global issue, such as human rights, protecting indigenous peoples’ rights or even democracy, is not something that can be won in a few months or even years. It needs high awareness and immediate action on a sustained basis for perhaps decades. Past protesters and their leaders don’t seem to have had the longevity and tenacity required to take the fight to its logical conclusion. Somewhere, somehow they grew up and got tied up with the struggles of their own lives or pursuit of their ambitions and passions. This is what happened, for instance, with the popular protests and movements that began in 1992

— the year that Rio de Janeiro hosted the UN Conference on Environment and Development, known as the Earth Summit, which was the first global environmental activity that saw leaders from all over the world head to Brazil and take the pledge to do all that was needed to save the world and its environment.

The Rio meet ended with at least five key agreements and declarations, including one on climate change and another on forests. However, nearly 30 years on, the situation is anything but promising on any of the declarations.

For nearly two decades after the Rio meet, the entire world seemed to have gone to sleep on what were clearly burning issues then, and are still burning issues now. The leaders and the participants in the protests around Rio are also no longer visible in the public domain, as the global economic boom and the tech flare-up of the early 21st century seems to have co-opted most people, even those who were climate change-aware and wanted to do something about it. Some of them may indeed be part of or even leading those very businesses and governments that seemed to be the core of the problem back in 1992.

So what will happen when Thunberg and her contemporaries grow up? One may not need to despair. One can take some solace from the fact that the situation on the ground today seems so much worse and the scale of crisis so much larger than during the time of the preceding generation. This means that today’s youth will perhaps not have the luxury of forgetting about the environment even for a moment, and that the outbreak of one crisis after another will keep Thunberg and her ilk glued to their cause.