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GIRLS LEAD THE CURRENT CLIMATE MOVEMENT

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These are some inspiring and insightful passages in “Climate Girls Saving Our World: 54 Activists SpeakOut” by Gayle Kimball

 

 — Our most urgent problem is the complex of the climate crisis, global warming, pollution, and environmental destruction. Everyone is impacted and must take action in the decade ahead or tipping points become irreversible, such as the thawing of Arctic permafrost and the Antarctic ice sheet, extinction of many species, and the loss of rainforests and coral reefs. Once reached, there will be no hope of remediation.4 We must reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions (GGEs) by 2050, which means cutting them in half by 2030. Humans, in our Anthropocene Epoch, have caused rapid warming in contrast to the previous Holocene Epoch where temperature didn’t vary more than a degree for over 12,000 years.

— Climate girls are fierce because they fear for our future and are furious at greedy adults for destroying our environment, as Severn Suzuki warned in 1992. Since then, warming, and pollution keep on increasing, inciting Greta Thunberg to make similar warnings in 2018. Sadly, climate organizations led by the UN haven’t taken real action, even going backward when President Trump withdrew the US from the Paris Agreement of 2015. No other creatures destroy their ecosystem like homo sapiens, causing young activists to lose respect for adults in power.

Girls lead the current climate movement, the large majority of the activists in every youth-led climate group I’ve discovered. They explain that they are caring, have more affinity with nature, and are less afraid of peer pressure than teenage boys. Many think of themselves as out of the norm so they have less to lose than popular students by standing out. The large majority of the 54 activists we’ve heard from are only or first-born children, used to leading. Many of them are from privileged backgrounds, able to attend private schools, travel to conferences, and skip school to strike. They stand on the legacy of the global women’s movement, all but two strongly identifying as feminists and many reject the concept of binary gender. Determined not to give up hope, they predict they will be changemakers.

The activists view the current focus on individual actions like recycling as a smokescreen to obscure the need for action to stop the 100 companies that produce 71% of the global greenhouse gas emissions. Activists fault the capitalist system for rewarding the polluters, as with government tax reductions or building coal plants. They demand that governments recognize the climate emergency and implement plans to overhaul the capitalist system with its emphasis on extraction, moving to a regenerative circular economy. This radical transformation includes making traditional masculinity a dinosaur, as well as creating a circular economy. They aim to make their own groups non-hierarchical but report it can be problematic when some people have more time to give to organizing than others and discrimination still exists in the movement.

Since we have only a few years before global warming reaches tipping points that can’t be repaired, we can’t wait for Gen Z to assume positions of power. Therefore, youth activists emphasize “electorialism,” voting in progressive politicians now, although many of them aren’t old enough to vote. The European Union seems most committed to implementing a Green Deal, along with Nordic countries, and municipalist cities like Barcelona, Vancouver, and Preston (UK) lead the way.

— The activists and I both edited the transcript of the Skype video interviews, which are available to view on my YouTube channel. It includes their social media links, mainly Twitter and Instagram, to stay current with their work. I learned to respect Gen Z highly although they’re accused of being apathetic, which gives hope, plus became more conscious of my contributions to climate change...