Opinion

OPINION | FRAN ALEXANDER: Like Thunberg, world's young people act to rescue Earth's climate

Young people take up advocacy for climate

"You all come to us young people for hope. How dare you? You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words."

-- Greta Thunberg, September 2019

Kids and young adults have learned if they want something done right, they'll have to do it themselves. Rightfully, they are angry that environmental burdens are weighing down their childhoods and their youth, time when they need to be spared the woes of the world as they grow up, have some fun and establish their future professions and families. Instead, increasing climate catastrophes and rising carbon levels in the atmosphere are seemingly being ignored or denied by sleeping or bought-off politicians.

These students can do the math. They see each passing year subtract from the time desperately needed to disarm irreversible climate change. Because they can also add and multiply, they, unlike many leaders in power, understand how exponentially increasing problems are becoming unsolvable.

In response to climate change threats, youth organizations have been multiplying across the globe. Internationally, young people involved in climate issues probably first started coalescing in the early 1990s. In 1996 the European Youth Forum formed, and in 2001 SustainUS started creating youth-run coalitions in the United States.

"Through symbolic and direct actions, SustainUS brings youth to international negotiations to dismantle the political elite's narrative and demand stronger, urgent action," Teen Vogue wrote in a story about the organization.

Stronger, urgent action is the message consistently running through most youth activism. The major push by students calling on academic institutions to divest of their financial ties to fossil fuel industries is finally having major impacts. Universities' financial planning and fossil fuel industries' justifications of their practices and concerns for their long-term viability are all changing.

In his Forbes article, "The Case for Fossil Fuel Divestment," David Carlin points out that in just a decade divestment has gone "from a fringe strategy to a $14.5 trillion movement with over a thousand major investors, pension plans, and endowments committed." Those commitments within these huge holdings seem to be at varying levels of divestment for fossil fuel holdings, sometimes even in favor of alternate energy systems.

My favorite "mad-as-hell-and-not-going-to-take-it-anymore" youth action is a lawsuit called Juliana vs. United States, brought in 2015 by 21 youth from several states. This suit, guided by the non-profit Our Children's Trust, is ongoing. The organization is a " public interest law firm that provides strategic, campaign-based legal services to youth from diverse backgrounds to secure their legal rights to a safe climate. " Additionally, they explain, "We work to protect the Earth's climate system for present and future generations by representing young people in global legal efforts to secure their binding and enforceable legal rights to a healthy atmosphere and stable climate, based on the best available science."

The Sunrise Movement to stop climate change and to support policies like the Green New Deal is a feet-on-the-ground type of organization as is Extinction Rebellion Youth, focused chiefly on climate justice. Zero Hour also coordinates youth on climate and Green New Deal issues in the U.S.

Fridays for the Future, also called School Strike for Climate, began in 2018 after Greta Thunberg's famous Friday strike protests outside the Swedish parliament building in which she demanded reduction in carbon emissions as per the Paris Agreement. Since then, strikes have been organized around the world and millions of people have attended. There are now hundreds of diverse youth climate organizations globally.

To comprehend the decades of climate work done by children and young adults, it is crucial that Slater Jewell-Kemker's free film, "Youth Unstoppable," is watched by as wide an audience, young and old, as can pull up its title on a computer. This is a must-see documentary begun when Slater was 15 and which took her 11 years to complete.

Beginning her activism with her camera around age 6 prepared her for later recording her experiences as she attended numerous UN climate change conferences and filmed places affected by severe climate impacts. From seeing both drought and floods in Nepal to associating with world leaders at the Paris Accords, she followed and filmed her maturing international friends in their evolving struggles to try yet again to make a difference at conference after conference.

This young filmmaker plainly lays out in her movie what current and future generations are up against on climate. For our old adult sakes, we can only hope that youth will be forgiving and indeed be absolutely unstoppable for their own sakes.

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