Climate Strikers: Don’t Forget To Do Your Homework
Footprint Notes 3/15/19, updated 9/17/19
“You say you want a revolution, well you know…we all need to do our homework.”
Hey Young people! I’m thrilled by the Climate Strike and wish you, your grownups and our planet wild success! Just one thing…
It’s been six months since I first uploaded this post. The strike keeps growing! And that one thing…is still there.
The strike is gaining force. More students are taking to the streets to safeguard their future; to protest the inaction of their elders. We have more amazing stories. More protest signs ranging from humorous to heartbreaking (“I was hoping for a cooler death?!”)
I’ve been following the story with admiration and foreboding.
I was young once. I protested in the streets. We chanted slogans. It worked! A government toppled. The Shah of Iran, if you must know.
And it was magical!
Yes, this is from the perspective of a 13 year old in Shiraz. I’m not going for political analysis, this is just how it felt.
The most magical moments were the rooftop protests. They had declared martial law, a curfew. In defiance, people went to their rooftops at night and called out “Allah-o-akbar” — God is great. That was the text. The subtext was: “We want change! Do you want change? Yes I want change! He wants change too. We all want change!” A city-wide, call and response under cover of night. What euphoria! The lights twinkled and we basked in our shared desire for change!
And we got change.
Everything changed. And…let’s just say, it wasn’t quite the change some wanted.
That experience had a profound effect on me. All the joyful noise around the movement. The unfolding reality and reactions and flailing. Days and nights of anxious adults glued to the radio. Helplessness. Lots of talk, little impact. A profound lack of guidance.
Fast forward to today. And I see it again. Everywhere I look in the Climate movement. But this time, I’m one of the adults. Which is why I’m saying, climate strikers, everybody: we need to do the homework.
We have a short window to get the climate fight right. How can we make sure we don’t fall into the same traps? What needs to happen?
Basically: You, & everyone who cares about climate, need to “do the homework” to be able to show us (your fellow strikers!) your “First Gigawatt Down.” More about that in another post. But…
First — What Strike?
For those of you just joining us…Great News! 💚💚💚 When I first posted this — (3/15/19) — it was the first Deep School Strike For Climate! Young people were beginning to rise en masse to fight for their future. It was a spectacular mobilization. At one count they had gathered in over 2000 places in 132 countries! And they were just getting started.
Some terms:
A “Deep” Strike is when many countries synchronize together. The May 15 event was the movement’s first Deep Strike. And on September 20, it’s going to be even bigger!
In addition to these “Deep Strikes”, many youth are committed to “Weekly Global Strikes” — striking every Friday outside their local city hall or parliament.
The weekly strikes have been going on since Greta Thunberg began on August 20, 2018 to sit in front of the Swedish parliament every school-day for three weeks, “to protest against the lack of action on the climate crisis.” She posted what she was doing on social media with and it caught on. Watch her amazing TED Talk here.
After those first three weeks, she decided to return to school Monday through Thursday, but continue striking every Friday…
…until the Swedish policies provided a safe pathway well under 2-degree C, i.e., in line with the Paris agreement.
The hashtags #FridaysForFuture and #Climatestrike spread and many students and adults began to protest outside of their parliaments and local city halls all over the world.
And that’s the plan. Youth and supportive grownups will continue striking until the problem is solved. #WhateverItTakes!
You can Join the global movement on the FridaysForFuture.org site. You can also join the Sunrise Movement if you are more focused on the USA. Sunrise is “building an army of young people to make climate change an urgent priority across America, end the corrupting influence of fossil fuel executives on our politics, and elect leaders who stand up for the health and wellbeing of all people.” In particular, they are very active in finding candidates to enact the Green New Deal.
Whatever It Takes
This is where things get fuzzy. The movement has great intensity directed to political action. And political action is important, but insufficient. In my experience you can get rid of a whole political class, depose a king — whatever it takes — but once you succeed in doing that, you will come face to face with the realization that you still have a deeper issue to solve. You still need to figure out what it takes to have good government. To have effective, satisfying, collective problem solving.
You may be tempted to think this won’t affect you. The line I hear a lot is, “we have the solutions, we just lack political will.” Yes, we definitely have solutions. But that political will — is that the main thing blocking the solutions? Have you spent much time on #ClimateHomework, i.e., grappling with those solutions?
Back in March, on the “How to Climate Strike” page we found some resources, including this Briefing Paper(pdf) and this Google Doc: School #ClimateStrike — All You Need To Know.
In this screen grab you see the Key Facts of Why We #ClimateStrike.
Notably, it’s because “We have the solutions — renewable energy is cheaper than fossil fuels across much of the world.”
Emphasis on “We have the solutions.”
Similar statements are made in the Sunrise writeup.
Meanwhile, the Briefing Paper identifies “confusion” as the biggest problem facing the movement, and “education” as the antidote. But which confusion? And what education?
First it says we suffer from manufactured confusion on climate science:
But then, it points to something else, far more troublesome: solution confusion, and divergent preferences:
Say What?! Diversity a Weakness?
This, my friends, is where & why we REALLY need to do our homework.
It’s one thing to fight villainous “industrial interests” spreading lies about the science of climate change. It’s quite another to grapple with diverse ideas about solutions in a democracy — and then start to see that democracy as a weakness. Yes, “We have the solutions.” There are a lot of them, and people disagree about them, and have different preferences. So, along with the solutions, we also have a lot of issues to process with regard to those solutions. And the sooner we process them, the better.
The antidote to the first problem may be straightforward education (“Dude! Climate change is real, here are some facts!”). But the antidote to the second problem is deeper. Mere “education” won’t help. You need more.
You need to roll up your sleeves and engage in collective fact finding, problem solving and decision making. Develop your higher order civic engagement skills. You need to commit to respecting a diversity of opinions. A Zero Carbon Player Has Rights!
There’s no shortcut here. You’re going to need a systematic, creative, candid, compassionate process to work through this.
Might I suggest a Zero Carbon Coaching Clinic? #ZeroCarbonCoachingClinic
And developing and understanding metrics like the First Gigawatt Down #FirstGigawattDown.
Does that seem like a lot of extra homework? We’re just getting started!
And we would be thrilled to have passionate youth join this movement and help us develop this clinic and the metrics. Join the Dream Team here!
Action To Take Now, on social media
Is this work you agree with? Here’s something you can do about it right now on social media. Whenever you see something that calls for vague action — invite the author to explore more specific action. Here’s an example:
In this tweet, Kim Nicholas urges politicians to “do something before 2ºC”.
Absolutely! We must all definitely urge politicians to do something before 2º.
But we can’t stop there. I know twitter doesn’t give you much room, but you don’t need that much.
Retweet and ask, “can we be more specific on what the “something” in “do something” is? YES we can!” and link to the coaching clinic, like I did here.
And…crickets. Clearly we need to go strike somewhere and get this message out! Add this to the climate strike messaging! Looking for signs? Here are some signs!
OK, here’s another attemt (you can probably do much better on these tweets) where I respond to Greta’s tweet above with, “Speaking of #WhateverItTakes, here’s a process to get clear on the specifics.”?
What would you say? Share your thoughts, and links to actual tweets below!
To zero carbon and beyond!
And enjoy the striking!
This is a splendid time to be alive! Throwback time. The Iranian Revolution of 1979. The revolution itself, from the view of a pre-teen — was magical! The disruption of normal life and school. The tension and exhilaration in the streets. The nights with martial law and curfew — the call and response shouting from the rooftops at night. The possibility of transformation.
And then the change came. And…well…Check out Persepolis some time.
The moral of the story is: Do your homework, young people! Know specifically what you want. Get to know, specifically, what other people want. It’s not rocket science. You can handle massive multiplayer online games — you can handle figuring out your preferred path to climate solutions (pro tip, check out the First Gigawatt Down concept).
YES— wait! Why do I keep saying “homework”? This is a game. A #RacetoZeroCarbon! Massive multiplayer online and real life augmented reality game of our times.
Thank you for joining us at Footprint to Wings as we stoke the Race to Zero Carbon, now in progress.
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