Climate strike

Oceania/ Australia/ 23.09.2019/ Source:

Organisers of the school strike for climate estimate 300,000 people turned out in more than 100 cities and towns

Hundreds of thousands of Australians took to the streets on Friday as they called for greater action on the climate emergency in more than 100 cities and towns across the country.

Organisers of the school strike for climate claimed about 300,000 people attended dozens of rallies, including an estimated 100,000 in Melbourne and 80,000 in Sydney. The unprecedented climate crisis protests were likely the largest public demonstrations in Australia since the marches against the Iraq War in 2003.

“I fight for climate justice because everyone deserves a safe future,” 17-year-old student Niamh told a crowd that spilled out of a Melbourne park and into the city streets. “The government is not supporting it yet, but together we will change that.”

Sparked by the first climate striking student, Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg, the protests have grown into a global movement. In Australia, they have garnered support from the wider environmental movement, but also from other non-profits and charities, unions and some businesses.

Friday’s crowds doubled the size of the student strikes in March, organisers said. Protesters ranging in age from toddlers to the elderly chanted slogans such as “we are not drowning, we are fighting,” and held up signs and placards.

Protesters packed Spring Street in Melbourne for the climate strike. Photograph: James Ross/AAP

Many were personally critical of the prime minister, Scott Morrison, who is currently in the US to visit Donald Trump. Morrison drew criticism this week after confirming he would not attend the United Nations Emergency Climate Summit in New York.

In Sydney and Melbourne, there were long lines to enter the rallies, which brought parts of both cities to a halt. Throngs of students, families, mums with strollers, officer workers and unionists filled Sydney’s Domain to hear from protest organisers, Indigenous students, Pasifika activists, and union leaders.

Moemoana, 18, had come from Wollongong to the protest, and her homeland is Samoa.

“I’ve come to fight for the Pacific,” she told Guardian Australia in the crowd.

“Seas are rising and it’s affecting Pacific Islands, especially Tuvalu and Kiribati, it’s a real threat and Australia needs to know that Pasifika are neighbours and Australia really needs to help out.”

Red Rebels from Extinction Rebellion join the Sydney climate strike. Photograph: Steven Saphore/AAP

Marlie Thomas, a Kamilaroi high school student from Gunnedah, said she was attending the rally on the authority of her elders, not the department of education.

“I’ve had to help collect bottled water for our family in Walgett,” she said, about the western NSW town which has run out of water after rivers dried up.

About 35,000 people attended a protest in Brisbane. Across Queensland, climate strikes had a very direct local message to match the ambitious global demands of protesters: a stop to the Adani Carmichael coalmine and action to save the Great Barrier Reef.

Large crowds turned up in places torn between coal basins and the Queensland coast in places like Mackay and Townsville, which have mineworkers’ jobs and a tourist industry at stake.

“We strike because our future is in their hands,” said Brisbane year 12 student Morgan. “Our very existence sits precariously on the shoulders of politicians who care more about whether almond milk can be called milk than they do about climate change.”

In Melbourne, where the protests coincided with the last day of the school term, the rally packed out Treasury Gardens and spilled onto Spring Street, where the state’s parliament sits.

“I feel like there isn’t going to be very much of a future, or if there is, it will be very short unless we do something,” said Michaela Pam, 15, who took the day off school to attend.

But the Coburg High School student told Guardian Australia of the large crowds: “It makes me feel really happy. You get a little bit of hope.”

Melbourne organisers Niamh and Freya, 16, told the crowd the protesters did not blame those who worked in the fossil fuel industry for the climate crisis.

“We understand the role fossil fuels have played in putting food on the table for families,” said Freya. “It’s vital we all work together, not against one another. It’s not about jobs versus the environment.”

Large numbers also gathered in Australia’s other major cities. Organisers estimated about 15,000 attended a strike in the capital, Canberra, while there were about 10,000 people at rallies in both Perth and Adelaide.

Organisers in Tasmania said 22,000 people attended an event in Hobart. Bob Brown, a former leader of the Greens and a giant of the environmental movement, said the crowds were larger than those during protests against the Franklin Dam in the 1980s.

Students and protesters also gathered in smaller centres, from the beaches of Byron Bay on Australia’s east coast to the outback towns of Alice Springs and Katherine. In the Queensland town of Chinchilla, a lone striker, Ariel Ehlers, 12, staged her own strike.

Marchers brought their signs – and sense of humour – to the Brisbane march. Photograph: Glenn Hunt/Getty Images

Organisations striking included 33 Australian unions, 2,500 businesses including Atlassian, Canva, Domain and Intrepid, and faith institutions including the Anglican Church and Uniting Church, organisers said.

Universities said they would not penalise students who missed classes to attend, while the Uniting Church synod for NSW and the ACT also allowed their students to strike. Catholic and Anglican church-run schools as well as NSW public schools said students should remain in class.

The acting prime minister, Michael McCormack, said the rallies should have been held on a weekend so they didn’t disrupt businesses, schools and universities.

Source of the notice: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/sep/20/hundreds-of-thousands-attend-school-climate-strike-rallies-across-australia

Comparte este contenido:

By: The Guardian.

The youth climate movement has created a new sense of urgency. Adults, including politicians, must now focus on plotting a safer course

Climate strike: global climate change protest as Greta Thunberg and students march – live updates

‘When Greta Thunberg and other young campaigners met US legislators this week, it was not to propose a specific course of action but to assert their right to a liveable future.’ Thunberg listens to speakers during a climate change demonstration at the US supreme court in Washington DC on Wednesday. Photograph: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters

This Friday’s school strike, which adults around the world have been asked to join, is the largest mobilisation yet attempted by the youth climate movement launched last year by the Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg. As such, it is an event of international significance. History shows not only that social change is possible, even when the interests ranged against it are formidable, but that peaceful protest is among the most effective ways to bring it about. The campaigns against slavery, for female suffrage and for workers’ and civil rights, as well as the independence movements of former colonies including India, all harnessed new forms of civic participation and activism to the cause of progress.

Movements on behalf of people who lack voting rights, of course, have little choice but to try to exercise influence outside the ballot box. As adults in democracies, we have become used to making our political choices in elections, with only a small minority in most countries actively involved in parties or campaigning. That does not mean political action should end there. And except for 16- and 17-year-olds in a handful of countries, children cannot vote. If they want their voices to be heard they must seek other means – such as a school strike.

Some of the young people demonstrating on Friday will have been influenced by adults. But teenagers, who are typically rebellious and open to new ideas, have been important in social movements before. No one should be surprised if young people are more alarmed than their grandparents about effects that are predicted to become more severe in 20 or 30 years’ time.

Covering Climate Now: how more than 250 newsrooms are joining forces this week to spotlight the climate crisis

It is the simplicity of the movement’s message, as well as the youth and determination of the protesters, that has made them unignorable. Less than a year ago, the world’s leading climate scientists issued a warning that we are running out of time to avert the worst effects of global heating, at a meeting at which some scientists were reported to be in tears. Temperatures are continuing to rise and the effects are already punishing, particularly in poorer parts of the world. But increases of more than 1.5 degrees celsius would lead, scientists warn, to food scarcity and water stress for hundreds of millions more people. Heat-related deaths, forest fires and mass displacements by flooding become far more likely in this scenario, while for species including coral the consequence would be extinction.

Yet despite these dire warnings and the attempts at decarbonisation overseen since 1988 by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world is failing. Carbon emissions in 2018 reached a record high of 37.1bn tonnes. There has been some progress, measurable in pledges by governments and notably a decade of emissions cuts in the EU. The profile of green issues is higher, the cost of renewables is falling fast and public opinion in many countries is shifting. But our path is taking us towards a painful and dangerous future.

Greta Thunberg and George Monbiot make short film on climate crisis – video

The climate strikers demand that the world faces these facts. Their aim is to force us to confront a problem that, for far too long, we have found it convenient to ignore. When Greta Thunberg and other young campaigners met US legislators this week, it was to assert their right to a livable future. In a short film with George Monbiot, also this week, she was more specific, advocating the protection and restoration of ecosystems as a natural climate solution.

A reckoning is overdue with those who, seeking to avoid the transition to clean energy, misled the public. Without the lost decades of inaction and denial, global heating need never have become the emergency it now is. Many politicians as well as fossil fuel industry executives and lobbyists are deeply culpable. But Friday is an opportunity to take action – as the Guardian is doing by declaring a climate emergency.

Environmental campaigners, scientists and others deserve praise for their climate work over many decades. That we are nowhere near where we should be, in spite of their efforts and knowledge, is a cause for anger. The freshness and seriousness of the school strike movement is a reason to hope

Source of the article: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/sep/19/the-guardian-view-on-the-school-climate-strike-protests-that-matter

Comparte este contenido:

Hundreds of thousands attend school climate strike rallies across Australia

The Guardian view on the school climate strike: protests that matter

Covering Climate Now: how more than 250 newsrooms are joining forces this week to spotlight the climate crisis

OtrasVocesenEducacion.org

Recomendamos

Búsqueda

Visitantes

Covering Climate Now: how more than 250 newsrooms are joining forces this week to spotlight the climate crisis

OtrasVocesenEducacion.org

Recomendamos

Búsqueda

Visitantes

Tu voz en Otras Voces

¡Ayúdanos a mantener abiertas las puertas de esta aula!