Naomi Klein, Bill McKibben and others: We’re stepping up – join us for a day to halt this climate crisis
On 20 September, at
the request of the young people who have been staging school strikes around the
world, we’re walking out of our workplaces and homes to spend the day demanding
action on the climate crisis, the greatest existential threat that all of us
face. It’s a one-day climate strike, if you will - and it will not be the last.
This is going to be the beginning of a week of action all over the world. And
we hope to make it a turning point in history.
We hope others will
join us: that people will leave their offices, their farms, their factories;
that candidates will step off the campaign trail and football stars will leave
the pitch; that movie actors will scrub off their makeup and teachers lay down
their chalk; that cooks will close their restaurants and bring meals to
protests; that pensioners too will break their daily routines and join together
in sending the one message our leaders must hear: day by day, a business as
usual approach is destroying the chance for a healthy, safe future on our
planet.
We are well aware
that, by itself, this strike and a week of international climate action won’t
change the course of events. The good news is that we have the technologies we
need – the price of a solar panel has plunged 90% in the past decade. And we know
the policies to make them work: all across the planet some version of a Green New Deal has been proposed, laws that would speedily
replace fossil fuels with the power of sun and wind, along the way providing good
jobs and stabilising strong local economies. We salute the people – many of
them young – working hard to pass those measures against the entrenched
opposition of the fossil fuel industry.
The September day of
global action is designed to support those people. We hope all kinds of
environmental, public health, social justice and development groups will join
in, but our greatest hope is simply to show that those working on this crisis
have the backing of millions of human beings who harbour a growing dread about
our environmental plight but who have so far stayed mostly on the sidelines. It
may take a few attempts to get those kind of numbers in the streets, but we
don’t have too long: our window for effective climate action is closing fast.. read more:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/may/24/climate-crisis-global-strike