September 20th, 2019 is the first anniversary of 16 year-old Greta Thunberg’s courageous stand on the climate issue in Sweden. This September, millions of us will walk out of our workplaces, schools and homes to join young climate strikers on the streets and demand an end to the age of fossil fuels.
Millions of school climate strikers have been leaving their classrooms every Friday. Now they hope that everyone else will join them in action. Going on climate strike means people everywhere walking out of their homes, their offices, their farms, their factories.
Everyone is needed to disrupt business as usual: from sports stars, actors and teachers to food industry workers, psychologists, delivery drivers and everything in between. We can all take part, whatever our circumstances, by refusing to accept the status quo.
Already people in 150 countries are organising for the global climate strikes this September. Some will spend the day in protest against new pipelines and mines, or the banks that fund them; some will highlight the oil companies fuelling this crisis and the politicians that enable them. Others will spend the day in action raising awareness in their communities and pushing for solutions to the climate crisis that have justice and equity at their heart.
On a grossly unequal planet, not everyone will be able to take a day off or take part in the same way. But we can all take a stand and make our voices heard. Find out how.
posters by Jhon Cortes
Why go on #ClimateStrike?
Our house is on fire. The climate crisis is an emergency but we’re not acting like it. People everywhere are at risk if we let oil, coal and gas companies continue to pour more fuel on the fire.
Our hotter planet is already hurting millions of people. If we don’t act now to transition fairly and swiftly away from fossil fuels to 100% renewable energy access for all, the injustice of the climate crisis will only get worse.
We need to act right now to stop burning fossil fuels and ensure a rapid energy revolution with equity, reparations and climate justice at its heart.
But it’s going to take all of us working together to succeed. Join the Climate Strikes starting on September 20 – three days out from the UN’s climate emergency summit and continuing on September 27.
Millions of us will walk out from home, work, school or university to declare a climate emergency and show our politicians what action in line with climate science and justice means.
The climate crisis won’t wait, so neither will we.
RMB author Robert Sandford, EPCOR Chair for Water and Climate Security at the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health, gave the UN address at an International Youth Forum held in Victoria on July 8-9, 2019. Organized by the British-based ‘Trust for Sustainable Living’ and the Lieutenant-Governor of British Columbia, Her Honour Janet Austin, the forum was attended by nearly 200 school-aged children from 20 countries. After participating in the inspiring event, Sandford writes:
Youth are justified in claiming they are tired of my generation’s lies and excuses. We are taught as children to be respectful and obedient to authority. But what happens when that very authority uses our complaisance against us, to maintain power based on dangerously archaic principles? What if those principles not only prevent the world from progressing toward justice, equality, and sustainability, but in fact actively push us backward toward divisiveness, inequality, tyranny, and environmental collapse? Not to mention massive involuntary human migration that cannot but end in widespread conflict and accelerated environmental deterioration.
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