These Young Climate Justice Advocates Say It's Time for a Revolution

Jamie Margolin can’t remember a time in her life when climate change wasn’t a crisis. The signs were everywhere, from the disappearing sea life in the 16-year-old’s hometown of Seattle to the climate-related disasters in Colombia where her mother’s family lives.

Jamie Margolin of Seattle, Washington, left, is an
environmental activist who co-founded Zero
Hour with Nadia Nazar of Baltimore, Maryland,
right. With a team of volunteers, they are preparing
 for the first Youth Climate March in Washington, D.C.

“When you’re growing up with all this beautiful wildlife around you, it gives you a better idea of what you want to protect,” said Margolin, who will start 11th grade this fall. “And also it’s more painful when, for example, things go wrong, when you see that that habitat is being destroyed.”

Margolin said she wanted to take action when she was younger, but avoided it because the problem was so terrifying. But Donald Trump’s election spurred her to action.

“As young people, we find ourselves in this really awkward place in history where we are going to be alive for the worst effects of climate change, but we’re not old enough to make the decisions right at that tipping point where they need to be made,” she said.  

Read the HuffPost story by Yvette Cabrera -  “These Young Climate Justice Advocates Say It's Time for a Revolution.”

These Young Climate Justice Advocates Say It's Time for a Revolution

Jamie Margolin can’t remember a time in her life when climate change wasn’t a crisis. The signs were everywhere, from the disappearing sea life in the 16-year-old’s hometown of Seattle, to the climate-related disasters in Colombia where her mother’s family lives.

Jamie Margolin of Seattle, Washington, left, is an environmental
activist who co-founded Zero Hour with Nadia Nazar of
Baltimore, Maryland, right. With a team of volunteers, they
are preparing for the first Youth Climate March in Washington, D.C.

“When you’re growing up with all this beautiful wildlife around you, it gives you a better idea of what you want to protect,” said Margolin, who will start 11th grade this fall. “And also it’s more painful when, for example, things go wrong, when you see that that habitat is being destroyed.”

Margolin said she wanted to take action when she was younger, but avoided it because the problem was so terrifying. But Donald Trump’s election spurred her to action.

Read the story by Yvette Cabrera from the Huffington Post - “These Young Climate Justice Advocates Say It's Time for a Revolution.”

Meet our new deputy PM: Michael McCormack is just another Nationals climate sceptic

Given he is our new deputy prime minister, it is not surprising that “who is Michael McCormack?” pieces are now popping up everywhere. And yet, they glide over his worst offence: he appears to be just another National Party climate change denier.

New National Party Leader, Michael
McCormack - another climate change sceptic.

In some respects, McCormack is a departure from previous leaders of the Nationals like John McEwen, Doug Anthony or Tim Fischer, who were themselves farmers. McCormack, who today was appointed infrastructure and transport minister, is already being lined up in Question Time as a “fake farmer”. Political opponents like Labor’s Stephen Jones joked that the price tag was probably still on his Akubra, and that the only muster he’d ever done was to muster the numbers to knock off Barnaby Joyce.

Read The Monthly story by Paddy Maning - “Meet our new deputy PM: Michael McCormack is just another Nationals climate sceptic.”

'Everything Must Go' - George Monbiot

Everyone wants everything – how is that going to work? The promise of economic growth is that the poor can live like the rich and the rich can live like the oligarchs. But already we are bursting through the physical limits of the planet that sustains us. Climate breakdown, soil loss, the collapse of habitats and species, the sea of plastic, insectageddon: all are driven by rising consumption. The promise of private luxury for everyone cannot be met: neither the physical nor the ecological space exists.

But growth must go on: this is everywhere the political imperative. And we must adjust our tastes accordingly. In the name of autonomy and choice, marketing uses the latest findings in neuroscience to break down our defences. Those who seek to resist must, like the Simple Lifers in Brave New World, be silenced – in this case by the media. With every generation, the baseline of normalised consumption shifts. Thirty years ago, it was ridiculous to buy bottled water, where tap water is clean and abundant. Today, worldwide, we use a million plastic bottles a minute.

Every Friday is a Black Friday, every Christmas a more garish festival of destruction. Among the snow saunas, portable watermelon coolers and smart phones for dogs with which we are urged to fill our lives, my #extremecivilisation prize now goes to the PancakeBot: a 3-D batter printer that allows you to eat the Mona Lisa or the Taj Mahal or your dog’s bottom every morning. In practice, it will clog up your kitchen for a week until you decide you don’t have room for it. For junk like this we’re trashing the living planet, and our own prospects of survival. Everything must go.

Read the piece by Guardian columnist, George Monbiot - “Everything Must Go.”