Brief Thoughts on the Climate Crisis

Transcript of a Speech I Delivered at the Youth Climate Strikes on September 20, 2019 — at the University of Virginia and in Downtown Charlottesville.

I almost didn’t make it here today. Two months ago, I stood shivering, drenched in rain, on a Himalayan mountaintop, as human-sized chunks of rock and full-grown trees plummeted down the cliffside I was hiking. It was random luck that I wasn’t in the path of the catastrophic landslide.

The summer rainy season had arrived a month later than normal. Nepal received its average July rainfall in the span of 3 days, killing over 90 people in landslides and floods.

That same month was the hottest month on record. That month, wildfires ravaged the Arctic; a heat wave killed thousands in Europe; sixty percent of Greenland melted; the horn of Africa entered its ninth consecutive year of drought; and the Atlantic Ocean stirred a hurricane that would leave thousands of Bahamians homeless.

I could go on. Once-in-a-lifetime environmental calamities are now new normals throughout the world.

And, by the time we’re our parents’ age, Shanghai, Bangkok, Miami, New York City, and, closer to home — Virginia Beach and the Eastern Shore — will be buried under an ever-rising sea.

Blessed are not the millennials, for we shall inherit the Earth.

But, more importantly, we shall inherit an economic system that is fundamentally at odds with our planetary system, or so I wish to suggest to you on this cool September morning.

We shall inherit a mindset of unfettered growth and expansion; a notion that “progress” consists of a product flown from China to your doorstep within 24 hours of ordering it. We are told, in all sorts of subtle ways, that growth knows no limits. It’s the American way, the secret that any “most influential” CEO will tell you. We are told that life moves quickly and that the world “out there” is competitive and unforgiving. To keep up, businesses must be hyper-efficient — so we can consume as much as possible, at the cheapest cost, pursue what brings us the most pleasure in the fastest and most convenient way. It is no surprise that the moments of lowest carbon emissions arrive at times of recession.

So if you remember one thing that I say today, let it be this: the technology-driven Western industrial capitalism that has brought great growth and innovation and comfort has also brought great suffering. It will continue to, indefinitely — unless we do something about it.

Because the world of global corporations and money and power hums merrily along pumping coal, oil, and gas into a planet collapsing under its own weight. It tells us that this is the cost of “progress,” a requisite for lives of the utmost comfort and convenience. It promises unlimited freedoms to — freedom to emit and produce, to consume and discard of, unchecked and without consequence. It does not speak of the freedom from that our children will demand: freedom from widespread ecological crisis. This is where the mental work comes in.

Shifting our collective mindset will not be easy, but it is necessary, and I believe that it is possible.

Historically, youth social movements have brought an end to senseless wars and flagrant segregation. It is within our power, now, to weaken an oppressive system that prioritizes short-term profits over long-term rights to existence.

It is within our power to shift our attitudes and reorient our power structures. It is within our power to think beyond ourselves to unify under a common rallying cry. We have no other choice.

It will mean different things for different people. For most, it will making sacrifices, accepting the inconveniences that come with consuming less — particularly less meat, non-renewable energy, and plastic. It will mean speaking truth to power, devoting a little more of our money or effort or time to rejecting the 100 corporations that emit 70% of the world’s greenhouse gases.

Here, on these Grounds, it will mean fighting tooth and nail to divest from fossil fuels, to use our 9.5 billion dollar endowment to fully transition to renewable energy. It will mean, in Jefferson’s words, securing the rights to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” for not only our current selves, but for the entire future inhabitants of the planet.

To close, I leave with the words of Mario Savio, spoken 55 years ago, on a college campus not unlike this one. “There comes a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you cannot take part. You cannot even passively take part! And you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all of the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop!”