I am a Student Climate Striker
This is what it feels like to join 150 000 students like me protesting climate change on the same day
150 000. That is the estimated number of protesters who went up to the streets of Montreal during the Global Climate Strike for Future, an international movement of student activists opposing climate change inaction in over 2000 cities in 127 countries, inspired by the school strikes initiated by sixteen-year-old Greta Thunberg.
I was surrounded in a haze of what was mostly like-minded pro-environment students chanting in French, making noise and waving our posters while we gently strode forward.
Of course, everyone at the protest, myself included, were visibly overjoyed by seeing so many young people flood downtown Montreal to support the environment as this showed promise of a more ecologically responsible generation, as we believed.
Yet, there are many out there who remain critical and skeptic of these school strikes to protest for the climate. Many of these concerns are of a legitimate nature. However, as I stood as a student protester asking governments to regulate CO2 emissions and to impose stricter environmental protection legislation, I think the view us, Millenials and Generation Z share, radically differs from that of the Baby Boomers Generation X.
In the following paragraphs, I aspire to highlight concerns that have been made about the relevance of these student protests, and how I, a student climate protester, view these facts in the face of our fight for environmental justice.
“Global warming? The climate has always changed over human history!”
True, the world’s climate has significantly varied throughout its 4.5 billion year history. However, what is significant is not how much the climate had varied, but how much it has varied from human activity. Changes in our planet’s climate, although a mere 0.7 degrees Celsius, is still 10 times faster than post-Ice Age warming according to NASA. These subtle changes can gravely affect the climate, increasing the energy in the oceans which paves way for more extreme weather.
“If students stayed in school and protested after class, they would actually be able to acquire the knowledge necessary to protect the climate.”
Perhaps protesting on weekends would keep us in school. However, skipping class and forming human chains around schools is a lot more alarming and somewhat blasphemous. Doing so attracts more mediatic and political attention, which is a form of political pressure to adopt sustainable policies.
“Student climate strikers are being manipulated by far-left groups for corporate and political intentions”
I do admit that much of the chants I repeated during the protest and the information I regurgitate do have leftist tendencies. However, these climate strikes are based on weather observations from the start of the 20th century that has shown 0.7 C increase in global temperature on average and CO2 levels which increased by 25% from 1960 to 2015, a period where a petrol-based society flourished. The objective of these protests isn’t to debunk or prove that the left is the absolute truth in politics, but to incite governments of all levels to draft laws that take into account the effects that global warming from human activity could pose.
“These protests have no clear goal and will little persuade governments and corporations to change their policies”
Climate change is a big word. One effort to incorporate climate change into legislation is through the United Nations’ effort to host the Climate Change Conferences (COP). During COP21 in Paris, 2015, many of the world’s most industrialized nations including the US and China signed an international agreement to keep global warming temperatures below 2 C and to curb CO2 emissions by 9% before 2030. One reason why we are on a school strike is to protest the ignorance and unwillingness of countries, including the US, who are not committing to the agreement and to future COP meets to put forward more clear and urgent measures.
“Extreme-leftism is rising in youth and could be hazardous when it comes to politics.”
In Montreal, I saw left-wing parties and student socialist clubs participate in the protest. However, these marches aren’t promoting that extreme-leftism is an absolute truth for the future of politics, but rather that climate change needs to be further integrated into governmental laws. Left-wing parties (at least in Canada) happen to support environmental legislation more than their right-wing counterparts do, but this isn’t an absolute reality and could be subject to change in the years to come.
My goal in writing this article wasn’t necessarily to sway your views on climate change and 21st-century politics, but rather to give you a perspective on how I, a typical high school student, would support these climate strikes.
I do hope you found this read to be interesting and perhaps even provocative. If you would like to do so, please POLITELY comment below and perhaps discuss in a CIVILIZED and NON-PROFANE matter about our different views on this global issue.
