The Adults in the Room on Climate Change

I've mentioned environmental activist Greta Thunberg in both blogs in recent months. Greta is a 16-year-old  who jumped onto the world stage, literally and figuratively, at the COP24 climate conference in Poland last December. She has been blunt, saying that world leaders are acting like children in response to the global threat of climate change.

Greta began by convincing her family members to become vegans and give up air travel. Last year, when 15, she decided to not attend school until the 2018 Sweden general election in September in response to heat waves and wildfires in her native Sweden. She demanded that the Swedish government reduce carbon emissions as per the Paris Agreement, and she protested via sitting outside the national legislature every day during school hours.


Berlin
 
After the election, she continued to strike only on Fridays, which gained worldwide attention. She inspired school students across the globe to take part in student strikes. As of December 2018, more than 20,000 students held strikes in at least 270 cities in countries including Austria, Belgium, Canada, the Netherlands, Germany, Finland, Denmark, Japan, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States. That's impressive.

In Australia, thousands of school students were inspired by Thunberg to strike on Fridays, ignoring Prime Minister Scott Morrison's comments of "more learning in schools and less activism".  His comments are disturbing because the Australian government has taken a decidedly climate-change denying stance in practical terms. Meanwhile the country is living through an unprecedented heat-wave in which temperatures in the 40's C are cooking fruit on the trees, destroying field crops and causing wild creatures to die of heatstroke and dehydration.

This is one area amongst many where we may have to accept that children are the adults in the room. In too many spheres, including religion, those who should be acting as wise elders are protecting conventions which no longer make sense (if they every did) and holding on to power. Kids and young adults realize that their future depends on decisions which should have been made decades ago but are absolutely necessary today.

Pay attention to news about Greta and watch tomorrow for reports about the school strikes and protest marches around the world.