Plea from young on our fragile climate
If there was a message drummed by the millions of climate strikers on weekend streets around the world it was “you’re on notice”. Amid pictures on social media of rallies in various cities were photos of inspirational teen Greta Thunberg, comparing her lonely solo protest a year and a month ago outside the Swedish Parliament which got the ball rolling with what it has snowballed into now.
Slogans spotted included: “It’s getting hot in here — so take off all your coals”; “Why should we go to school when you won’t listen to the educated?” and “If you were smarter we’d be in school”.
People power movements come and go in individual countries with varied results. But with climate change, a global phenomenon to tackle it is building and will only accelerate.
Driven by the youngest amongst us, it has given budding rebels a cause and put a mass of pressure on political leaders, businesses and everyday people to get their acts together.
As the UN Climate Action Summit gets under way, the scope of changing climate impact is becoming more apparent: From rising temperatures, increasing natural disasters, depletion of animal and plant life and food and water stocks, as a potential driver of migration and conflict, and as a huge challenge to livelihoods.
A Georgetown University study in Science that analysed bird surveys found that the number of birds in North America have declined by an estimated three billion in the past 50 years.
Forward-looking policy makers know climate change needs to be incorporated into planning across the board. Mindsets on spending priorities and investments will be forced to rapidly change.
How changes are made will have major consequences within individual countries.
For instance, a new Brookings and Wall Street Journal analysis shows how the US economy has diverged markedly into two strands that broadly correlate to Blue (Democratic-voting) and Red (Republican-voting) territories in the past 10 years.
The Democratic districts — now more diverse and higher-educated — dominate the urban focused professional and digital services as Republican areas focus on more traditional sectors such as manufacturing, mining and agriculture. From a position of even prosperity in 2008, the study says the Democratic districts’ income, GDP and productivity have gained ascendancy.
The analysis suggests that the country could be headed for further political turbulence.
Or alternatively there could be “meeting points”. The study says: “Perhaps Democrats worried about climate change and Republicans weary of storm damage in the Midwest and along the Gulf Coast will be able to work together on responses to extreme weather.”
For the new generation protesters, mass action and the threat of voting pressure will be ineffective unless married to smarter organisation to get shifts through. The mass mobilisation in the past few days was a show of concern and plea for help from those set to inherit an uncertain future.
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