The Earth Aches, Youth Strikes
(Note: this is the final project for my journalism class that I enjoyed a lot!)
BAR HARBOR, Maine — — Several high school students will walk out from school on Friday, March 15, to demand that the government take immediate and appropriate action against climate change. The students from Mount Desert Island (MDI) High School and College of the Atlantic (COA) will gather at YWCA in the town for a demonstration.
“Walking out of school for one day, missing classes and having extra homework is well worth any gesture that I can make to ensure that I have a future on this beautiful planet,” says Sofie Dowling, 16, a junior student at MDI High School. Dowling lives on Great Cranberry Island, a two-mile long island with its highest point less than 100-feet above sea level. “I live here in this place where the ocean is so close to us. If we don’t make a drastic change now, my only home will be gone in too short a time.”
But the strike is not happening only in Bar Harbor. On March 15, hundreds of thousands of students will join in the Global Climate Strike for Future in more than 2,000 cities in 127 countries, including 192 cities solely in the United States (as of today).
“When we stand up here, we know that other people are doing it in Maine, but when we realize that [other people are] doing it in the States and all over the world, I think we are empowering each other and building the movement together. That is so incredible and exciting!” exclaimed Katrine Østerby, a strike organizing member and a sophomore at COA.
This global movement was started by one 16-year old girl in Sweden. Her name is Greta Thunberg, and since last August, she decided to sit on the ground outside of the Swedish parliament instead of going to school on Fridays. Now, the strike has spread and is known as the school strike for climate or Fridays For Future.
“If a few children can get headlines all over the world just by not coming to school for a few weeks, imagine what we could all do together if you wanted to,” Thunberg said in her TED talk in Stockholm last December. “Why should I be studying for a future that soon will be no more when no one is doing anything whatsoever to save that future? And what is the point of learning facts in the school system when the most important facts given by the finest science of that same school system clearly means nothing to our politicians and our society?”
Thunberg’s actions and poignant words are supported by many youths, and Thunberg has been invited to several strikes around Europe such as in France, Germany and Belgium. Her presence in the world and media has increased, and the World Economic Forum has even invited her to its annual conference.
“I don’t want you to be hopeful,” Thunberg said at Davos, Switzerland in January. “I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day. And then I want you to act. I want you to act as you would in a crisis. I want you to act as if the house was on fire. Because it is,” she said.
Youths are demanding that the governments take immediate action against climate change. Some are feeling fear from the extreme weather and the sea level rise that they experienced or witnessed on TV. Others are convinced that the situation is urgent by the scientific data.
According to a report that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published last October, human beings have only 12 years to make unprecedented changes to the energy framework before climate change irreversibly affect us and nature. Although the models in the report, such as reaching net zero CO2 emissions by 2055 or even by 2040, could look unrealistic, this is how drastic a change humankind needs to make. Not only do we need to start reducing CO2 emissions, but also we have to remove CO2 from the atmosphere using the power of technology and plants on a large scale, the report says.
However, just solving the problems is not enough, Østerby says.
“Solutions are important to find and discuss, but there is so much more that comes than just fixing the problems by just providing energy or just taking carbon dioxide out of atmosphere,” Østerby says. She is worried that geoengineering technology can create unpredictable and irreversible consequences. And even if it works, it can be a mere quick fix without touching the root causes and realizing climate justice.
“Climate justice recognizes the ethical and political dimensions of the climate crisis. This means acknowledging drastically different historical contributions to global emissions, the disproportionate effects that climate change has on various populations and regions of the world, how historical and economic legacies of oppression and exploitation are related to the unfolding crisis, and finally, how the burden of responsibility to act against climate change should be split,” explained Aura Silva, an alumnus of COA.
According to the Center for Global Development, developed countries are responsible for 79% of historical CO2 emissions. To address this inequality and achieve climate justice, the strike organizing team at Bar Harbor set one of their demands as “Recognize Climate Change Intensifies Systemic Injustice.”
“We are already seeing drastic effects of climate change where people who are least responsible for the climate crisis are disproportionally feeling the impact from developed countries’ use of fossil fuel,” says Rachael Goldberg, a strike organizing member and a senior student at COA.
“At this moment in time, over half of the population is under 30 years old which means that over half of the population define climate change as crisis at this time because it is putting us youth at risk,” Goldberg says.
Voices of Youth Matter
One of the strike organizing members, Iris Fen Gillingham, is from a frontline community which is directly affected by the extreme weather caused by climate change. She is a freshman student at COA but also a young environmental activist. Gillingham believes that it is very important that youths are a part of discussion on climate change.
Gillingham was born and raised at an off-grid organic farm in the Catskill Mountains of New York. But in 2006, a disastrous flood attacked the region, taking away the vegetables and equipment from the area. Gillingham family was forced to quit their farm business. Meanwhile, an oil fracking boom arose, and an oil company came into her community saying that they wanted to frack the Marcellus shale for natural gas. The community united to decline this offer and continue fighting against the fossil fuel company. Along with her father, who was one of the dedicated community members, Gillingham herself started to go to the community meetings.
“I would be in the room, full of all of these community members. They are like, ‘I’m doing this for my kids and my grandkids because they need a future!’ I was looking around and like, ‘But where are they?’ I would be the only youth in the room. That was a turning point for me because we need to have youth voice at the table,” Gillingham says.
She started getting more involved in youth-led, environmentally focused activism. As a team member of an organization, Zero Hour, Gillingham led The Youth Climate Lobby and March in Washington D.C. last July, gathering over 100 youths and meeting with 42 Senators, asking them to pledge to stop accepting money from the fossil fuel industry.
“Youth climate activism has been around for a long time,” Gillingham says. “Greta has been highlighted in the media now, but she was inspired by different actions that young people had already been taking. She took action, and others join in and created waves of young people.”
Even though the future doesn’t look so bright, the youths are determined to take action while getting empowered by other youths around the world.
“Climate change is a huge and urgent issue that we need to address,” says Østerby. “It’s so powerful that students are standing up right now. The landscape is changing and shifting. With the fact that this is going all over the world, this is the time to act.”
03/14/2019
