Young people have led the climate strikes. Now we need adults to join us too

Tomorrow, schoolchildren and students will be out on the streets again, in huge numbers, in 150 countries, at over 4,000 events, demanding that governments immediately provide a safe pathway to stay within 1.5C of global heating. We spent weeks and months preparing for this day. We spent uncountable hours organising and mobilising when we could have just hung out with our friends or studied for school.

School students protest against the climate crisis in Melbourne, May 2019.

We don’t feel like we have a choice: it’s been years of talking, countless negotiations, empty deals on climate change and fossil fuel companies being given free rides to drill beneath our soils and burn away our futures for their profit. Politicians have known about climate change for decades. They have willingly handed over their responsibility for our future to profiteers whose search for quick cash threatens our very existence.

We have learned that if we don’t start acting for our future, nobody else will make the first move. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.

Read the opinion piece from The Guardian - “Young people have led the climate strikes. Now we need adults to join us too.”

Hawkesbury students to strike for policy action on climate change

Up to one hundred Hawkesbury students from years 10, to 12 will be striking from school on Friday, March 15, demanding the government takes policy action on climate change.

Hawkesbury students ready to take strike action for the climate.

The Colo High School and Bede Polding College students, along with a group from Katoomba High, will catch public transport to the CBD to join students from schools around Sydney for the strike.

The School Strike 4 Climate Action website claimed tens of thousands of students from around the world would be participating in strikes.

William Potter (17), leader of the Go MAD Colo Student Action Group environmental initiative, said the strike would raise his generation’s concerns relating to climate change and the impact it poses on their futures.

Read the story from The Hawkesbury Gazette by Sarah Falson - “Hawkesbury students to strike for policy action on climate change.”

"I'm Sure Dinosaurs Thought They Had Time, Too': Over 12,000 Students Strike in Brussels Demanding Bold Climate Action

An estimated 12,500 students walked out of their classrooms in Brussels, Belgium on Thursday to join the country's second youth-led climate march in the past week, demanding that government leaders from across Europe take bold action to help stem the global climate crisis.

More than 10,000 Belgian students walked out of their classrooms
on Thursday for the second march for climate justice in the past
week, demanding that their government take bold action to
help stem the climate crisis.

Carrying signs reading "Act now before it's too late," "The planet needs you to give a damn," and "I'm sure the dinosaurs thought they had time, too," young people at the Marche Pour le Climat chanted, "We want change!" as they marched through the city in the rain.

Read the CommonDreams story by Julia Conley - “"I'm Sure Dinosaurs Thought They Had Time, Too': Over 12,000 Students Strike in Brussels Demanding Bold Climate Action.”

Protesters march as UN climate talks hit fossil fuel snag

Katowice: Thousands of people from around the world have marched through the southern Polish city that's hosting this year's UN climate talks, demanding that their governments take tougher action to curb global warming.

A climate activist at the March for Climate in a protest
against global warming in Katowice, Poland, on Saturday.

Protesters included farmers from Latin America, environmentalists from Asia, students from the United States and families from Europe, many of whom said climate change is already affecting their lives.

Read the story by Frank Jordans from The Sydney Morning Herald - “Protesters march as UN climate talks hit fossil fuel snag.”

Why aren't they doing anything?: Students strike to give climate lesson

This Friday, November 30, thousands of Australian students will go on strike, demanding their politicians start taking serious action on climate change.

Lucie Atkin-Bolton, an 11-year-old student and school
captain at Forest Lodge Public School, wants an end
 to 'coal-sourced energy', and is willing to go on strike for it.CREDIT:

The movement, School Strike 4 Climate Action, has been inspired by a 15-year-old Swedish student, Greta Thunberg, who started boycotting classes before parliamentary elections in her nation on September 9, and continues to skip school every Friday. She also has a particular message for Australia.

Students in each state capital and across 20 regional Australian centres will walk out of their classrooms this week to tell politicians that more of the same climate inaction is not good enough.

Here are some of the lessons they hope to teach.

Read The Sydney Morning Herald story by Peter Hannam - “Why aren't they doing anything?: Students strike to give climate lesson.”

Origin shareholders deliver stunning statement on anti-climate lobbying

Australian shareholders on Wednesday delivered a stunning statement to the Australian energy industry, when nearly half voted in support of a motion at the Origin Energy annual general meeting demanding the utility report on whether lobbying groups it supports are obstructing action on climate change.

Stunning statement at Origin Energy annual general meeting.

The resolution at the Origin AGM was supported by 46 per cent of votes, which analysts and campaigners said was a remarkable result given the first-time nature of the resolution, and the biggest ever protest vote not supported by a company board.

The company had earlier sought to defuse the issue by promising that in future documents it would improve the disclosure of its industry association memberships, including how it defines its public advocacy.

Read the story by Giles Parkinson from RenewEconomy - “Origin shareholders deliver stunning statement on anti-climate lobbying."

Why Capitalism is Obsolete

Imagine that I told you you had to build a machine with somewhere between a million and ten million parts, each one made to sub-millimeter precise specifications. Imagine I told you you’d have to build the organization of thousands of people to put it together. Imagine I told you it would take at least five decades.

Now imagine I told you the humanity’s future just might depend on it. Science fiction? Nope. Reality. That’s ITER, the world’s first large-scale fusion reactor — based in France, a joint social project between many countries. And it’s a perfect example of why capitalism is obsolete.

Maybe you’ve understood why already. But let me make it crystal clear. The great challenges of the future — we’ll come to precisely what those are in a moment — aren’t like those of the past. They are more complex, demanding, constrained, risky, and, perhaps most crucially of all, they are more risky. The world’s future depends on getting them right. The stakes are infinitely higher. If we get them wrong, we perish — whether through war, extinction, self-destruction, folly, thirst, famine. If we get them right — then and only then do we go on.

Read Umair Haque’s story from Eudaimonia - “Why Capitalism is Obsolete.”

(Yes, the individualistic, competitive, and winner take all philosophies of capitalism no longer play any useful role in ensuring, or guaranteeing the continuing wellbeing of humanity; it has been useful, but reflecting on the ideas of Karl Max, it was only a precursor to something even greater and more applicable to allowing us to thrive.

Yes, if we are to survive the rigours fo climate change, the most measurable change wrought to society by capitalism, we need to take the fundamentals of the world’s prevailing economic system and replace them with values that are about sharing, along with an understanding that our place on Earth is dependent on us caring for all the other flora and fauna - Robert McLean)

Standing Up for Rural Australia Means Standing Up on Climate Change

The farmers in this ad represent thousands from across Australia who are demanding rural and regional politicians do more to stop damage to our climate harming our livelihoods. 

We must act, to prevent a situation where our kids won’t have the choice to farm like we do.

Watch the YouTube clip - “Standing Up for Rural Australia Means Standing Up on Climate Change”.