'We won't stop striking': US students taking a stand over climate change // Greta Thunberg: ‘Some people can let things go. I can’t’
After bouncing around a few youth-led climate groups, Villasenor struck up a
rapport with fellow students Isra Hirsi, in Minnesota, and Haven Coleman, from
Colorado. The trio set about creating
Youth Climate Strike US, the
first major American response to the recent mass school walkouts by
European students frustrated by adults’ sluggish response to climate change. “My generation knows
that climate change will be the biggest problem we’ll have to face,” Villasenor
said. “It’s upsetting that my generation has to push these leaders to take
action. We aren’t going to stop striking until some more laws are passed.”
“I overthink. Some people can just let
things go, but I can’t, especially if there’s something that worries me or
makes me sad. I remember when I was younger, and in school, our teachers showed
us films of plastic in the ocean, starving polar bears and so on. I cried
through all the movies. My classmates were concerned when they watched the
film, but when it stopped, they started thinking about other things. I couldn’t
do that. Those pictures were stuck in my head.”
The American students
preparing to join a global
wave of school strikes on 15 March have been spurred by the actions of
Greta Thunberg, a 15-year-old Swede who started taking every Friday off school
to call for more rapid action by her country’s leaders. In a gently
excoriating speech, Thunberg told governments at UN climate talks in December
that “You say you love your children above all else, and yet you are stealing
their future in front of their very eyes.”
Those under 20 years
old have never known a world where the climate isn’t rapidly heating, ensuring
that their lifetimes will be spent in average temperatures never before
experienced by humans. For someone getting
their first taste of politics it can be hard to digest that precious little has
been done to avert a future of disastrous droughts, floods and storms since
James Hansen, then of Nasa, delivered his landmark
warning on climate change to Congress 30 years ago.
“It was confusing at
first because I expected politicians to be on to this, given what the
scientists were saying,” said Chelsea Li, a 17-year-old at Nathan Hale high
school in Seattle and local strike organizer. “But I didn’t see any action. We
are going to have to do the things the adults are too afraid to do because it’s
our futures we are fighting for.” The American strikers’
challenge appears particularly steep. It’s one thing protesting in the UK,
where carbon dioxide emissions have plummeted to
levels not seen since Queen Victoria’s reign, or Germany, where the government
has pledged to phase out all coal use within 20 years... read more:
