When the grown-ups are busy destroying the future, the young must step in and rescue it.
Meet 16-year-old Jamie Margolin, one of the rescuers.
It all started in the summer of 2017, when 14-year-old Jamie Margolin from Seattle, Washington, became fed up with the lack of proper response to the climate disasters that were causing devastation in large parts of the Americas. While hurricane Maria was wreaking havoc in the south, record-breaking wildfires were raging just 100 miles north, in neighbouring Canada, due to abnormal heat waves and minimal rainfall.
“The wind blew south, and Seattle was covered in smoke. It was the first time I experienced smog. Seattle is known for having very clear weather, and suddenly there were air quality warnings saying it was worse than in Beijing. This led me to start an international youth climate movement, which is now known as Zero Hour, because this is zero hour to act on climate change”, Jamie Margolin said during her online presentation at the Climate Emergency Plan seminar in Stockholm, Sweden, on24 November.
One year on, the Zero Hour movement organised the very first Youth Climate March in Washington DC and 25 other cities around the world.
“We are all high school students, and none of us are employed to do this, so we were working full time alongside school”, Jamie Margolin said. “I can’t even describe the hours and hours we spent working on this, but the United States needed to hear from its young people that enough is enough and that we deserve a better future.”
At the time of the Climate March, Zero Hour also presented a platform describing what young people need in order to have a livable future.
“We are very much a social justice organisation. We don’t just think: ‘Oh, there’s a lot of carbon in the air, we need to lower it’. We also think: ‘How did it get there? How did we allow a system that could lead us to such destruction?’”
Zero Hour traces the roots of the climate crisis back to colonialism, racism and other systems of oppression. In its platform for change, Zero Hour specifies the need for climate justice, including equity, racial justice and economic justice.
Jamie Margolin says it isn’t a coincidence that oil pipelines are being laid on indigenous lands, or that 69 percent of all coal plants are built in communities with a black majority.
“When people are poor, oppressed and marginalised, corporations can take advantage of them more.”
She also criticises capitalism, which is not an easy thing to get away within the United States,
“We don’t mean that business is bad or that commerce is bad or that trade is bad. What we mean is that capitalism causes climate crisis, because it is a system of just taking, taking and taking, and it relies on the constant growth of the GDP. We’re just cashing out the Earth with no spending limit. Profit is everything. It doesn’t matter if you pollute or cut down the forests, as long as you get money, money, money. It’s on different levels in different parts of the world, but where I live in the United States there is an insane focus on just more and more, and that is killing us.”
Just like Anders Wijkman, honorary chairman of the Club of Rome, Jamie Margolin believes that a transformation of the whole system is required if we are to be able to save the planet from contracting a life-threatening fever. She also believes that those most impacted by the climate crisis should lead the way forward.
“Youth must always lead, because youth has always shifted the culture towards progress and collective liberation. We also have the moral high ground on this issue, because we didn’t create the systems of oppression that caused this crisis, but we’re inheriting the worst of it.”
Facts about Jamie Margolin
Jamie Margolin is the founder and executive director of the youth-led climate action movement Zero Hour.
The mission of the movement is to centre the voice of diverse youth in the conversation around climate and environmental justice, and to create entry points, training and resources for young activists and organisers wanting to take concrete action around climate change.
For more information: thisiszerohour.org
About We Don’t Have Time
We Don’t Have Time are currently building the world’s largest social network for climate action. Together we can solve the climate crisis.
But we are running out of time.
Website: www.wedonthavetime.org
