tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/fridaysforfuture-71545/articles#FridaysForFuture – The Conversation2021-02-04T15:19:26Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1541462021-02-04T15:19:26Z2021-02-04T15:19:26ZGreta Thunberg effect: people familiar with young climate activist may be more likely to act<p>She was declared Time magazine’s <a href="https://time.com/person-of-the-year-2019-greta-thunberg/">person of the year</a> in the same month that Donald Trump told her to “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/dec/12/trump-angry-tweets-greta-thunberg-prompt-humorous-response-teen-activist">work on her anger management issues</a>”. Greta Thunberg has attracted international attention since her <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/sep/01/swedish-15-year-old-cutting-class-to-fight-the-climate-crisis">lone demonstration</a> outside the Swedish Parliament in August 2018. Her “<a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/47467038">school strike for the climate</a>” has now grown into a <a href="https://fridaysforfuture.org/">global movement</a> that has brought more than 10 million people onto streets worldwide to demand action on climate change. </p>
<p>In the same time that Greta Thunberg has become a household name, public concern about climate change has <a href="https://environment.yale.edu/news/article/public-concern-about-climate-change-remains-at-record-highs/">reached record highs</a> in the US. But what role has Thunberg’s personal influence played in this? Do her speeches appeal to diverse audiences or is she simply preaching to the choir?</p>
<p>Based on a nationally representative survey of over 1,300 US adults, our <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jasp.12737">study</a> found that Americans who report being more familiar with Greta Thunberg also feel more confident that they can help mitigate climate change as part of a collective effort. They are also more willing to take action themselves, by contacting elected officials or giving time and money to campaigns. We call this the Greta Thunberg effect.</p>
<h2>Familiarity breeds empowerment</h2>
<p>Seeing or hearing Greta Thunberg once doesn’t instantly turn someone into a climate activist. Nonetheless, we discovered a potentially important pattern of associations. Those more familiar with Thunberg were more likely to think their actions were effective and meaningful and were more intent on doing something about climate change. Our model seemed to show this might be the case because people who knew Thunberg’s story – how her lonely stand inspired millions around the world to join her – were more likely to recognise the potential for ordinary people to make a difference.</p>
<p>We wanted to know how widespread this effect might be, so we tried to find out which audiences Thunberg most appealed to. In her public appearances, she’s often <a href="https://www.vox.com/2019/9/17/20864740/greta-thunberg-youth-climate-strike-fridays-future">surrounded by young people</a> and her demands for climate action align most strongly with <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00139157.2019.1589300">liberal policy preferences</a>. Since people tend to listen more to those they <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2017-57170-001">identify</a> with, we thought that young and left-leaning people would be more strongly influenced by her.</p>
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<img alt="Young people walk past a sign advertising Greta Thunberg's book in Italy." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382471/original/file-20210204-18-hv3o49.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382471/original/file-20210204-18-hv3o49.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382471/original/file-20210204-18-hv3o49.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382471/original/file-20210204-18-hv3o49.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382471/original/file-20210204-18-hv3o49.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382471/original/file-20210204-18-hv3o49.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382471/original/file-20210204-18-hv3o49.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Young people are likely to be most receptive, but Thunberg’s influence defies generational and political divides.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/swedish-climate-activist-greta-thunberg-publish-1396948028">Antonello Marangi/Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>Surprisingly, the Greta Thunberg effect seems to be similar across age groups and the political spectrum for US adults, though it was stronger among liberals than conservatives. We didn’t survey children and teenagers, but we expect them to be most strongly <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/live/2019/sep/20/climate-strike-global-change-protest-sydney-melbourne-london-new-york-nyc-school-student-protest-greta-thunberg-rally-live-news-latest-updates">influenced by Thunberg’s school strikes</a>.</p>
<h2>‘No one is too small to make a difference’</h2>
<p><a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2695199">Pope Francis</a>, <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/listening-to-james-hansen-on-climate-change-thirty-years-ago-and-now">James Hansen</a> and <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/arielcohen/2020/02/24/jeff-bezos-commits-10-billion-to-new-bezos-earth-fund/">Jeff Bezos</a> have all tried to spur momentum on climate action using their religious, academic and financial authority. Greta Thunberg lacks any such elite status, so how has she been able to <a href="https://fridaysforfuture.org/what-we-do/strike-statistics/">succeed</a>?</p>
<p>Given the prevailing sense of <a href="https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20191010-how-to-beat-anxiety-about-climate-change-and-eco-awareness">doom about climate change</a>, empowering people to take action requires an ability to convey that change is possible. In her speeches, Thunberg <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/623668/no-one-is-too-small-to-make-a-difference-deluxe-edition-by-greta-thunberg/">proclaims</a> that “there is still time to change everything around”. Her <a href="https://fridaysforfuture.org/">Fridays for Future</a> campaign is also founded on the empowering message that anyone – even school students – can make a difference.</p>
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<img alt="Greta Thunberg sits reading with her famous sign nearby." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382468/original/file-20210204-24-1nnqwz4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382468/original/file-20210204-24-1nnqwz4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382468/original/file-20210204-24-1nnqwz4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382468/original/file-20210204-24-1nnqwz4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382468/original/file-20210204-24-1nnqwz4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382468/original/file-20210204-24-1nnqwz4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382468/original/file-20210204-24-1nnqwz4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Greta Thunberg’s example to others is that ordinary person can inspire extraordinary change.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/stockholm-sweden-april-12-2019-greta-1367455949">Liv Oeian/Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>Most importantly, Thunberg’s actions are consistent with her words. Her fiery demands to world leaders, whether at the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/sep/23/greta-thunberg-speech-un-2019-address">United Nations</a> or the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/sep/18/greta-thunberg-testimony-congress-climate-change-action">US Congress</a> demonstrate that anyone can – and should – challenge powerful institutions and people. </p>
<h2>What does this mean for climate action?</h2>
<p>How can we be sure that our findings reflect Greta Thunberg’s own effect and not the influence of <a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcomm.2019.00004/full">climate activism</a> more generally? The short answer is that we can’t. But to help isolate Thunberg’s influence, we asked our study participants to rate their support for climate activism and found that familiarity with Thunberg remained relevant even when controlling for this. </p>
<p>Of course, there are other things that could explain why people may want to take action on climate change, such as their prior support for environmental reform or their having heard about climate change in the news. But much of this is already captured indirectly by political <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1533-8525.2011.01198.x">ideology</a> in our model, which is one of the most important predictors of what a person reads and how much they support climate action. So, while there are <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-014-1173-5">many reasons</a> people might want to tackle climate change, being familiar with Greta Thunberg appears to have a unique influence on the extent to which they feel empowered to make a difference.</p>
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<img alt="A vast crowd holding protest banners march along a wide city street." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382469/original/file-20210204-18-kkcuzt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382469/original/file-20210204-18-kkcuzt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382469/original/file-20210204-18-kkcuzt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382469/original/file-20210204-18-kkcuzt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382469/original/file-20210204-18-kkcuzt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382469/original/file-20210204-18-kkcuzt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382469/original/file-20210204-18-kkcuzt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Munich, Germany on Friday September 20, 2019: 30,000 people strike for the climate.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/munich-germany-september-20-jubilee-fridays-1510146863">FooTToo/Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>But what if the Greta Thunberg effect is actually operating the other way? Did we instead find that people who are already more likely to act on climate change are just more familiar with Greta Thunberg? We can’t be certain because this type of study can’t prove cause and effect, it can only show associations. But statistical tests showed that this reverse explanation did not explain the data as well as our original one. Of course, reality may be more complex than what our models can capture. A positive feedback loop – where both explanations operate in tandem to inspire climate action – is also possible.</p>
<p>Future research can build on our findings using controlled experiments, but the patterns in our data at least suggest that Greta Thunberg is a particularly inspirational leader in part because she’s a convincing example that sudden, big change is possible. Now, how can activists amplify their own impact? Considering <a href="https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/publications/politics-global-warming-december-2020/">how politicised climate change</a> is, one answer might be appealing to people across the political spectrum by highlighting aspects of their identity that they tend to share with the wider public. The Greta Thunberg effect suggests that calls to action may be able to mobilise broad segments of society, regardless of age or politics.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/154146/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anandita Sabherwal receives funding from Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, London School of Economics and Political Science.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sander van der Linden works with the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication and consults for the UK government on climate change communication.</span></em></p>A new study documents the influence of Greta Thunberg on the public’s motivation to act on climate change.Anandita Sabherwal, PhD Student in Psychological and Behavioural Science, London School of Economics and Political ScienceSander van der Linden, Professor of Social Psychology in Society and Director, Cambridge Social Decision-Making Lab, University of CambridgeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1475192020-10-21T13:42:46Z2020-10-21T13:42:46ZHow the youth climate movement is influencing the green recovery from COVID-19<p>The idea of a green recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic is gaining traction around the world. The <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/pm-commits-350-million-to-fuel-green-recovery">UK</a> recently pledged to invest £350 million to cut emissions from heavy industry. <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-koreas-green-new-deal-shows-the-world-what-a-smart-economic-recovery-looks-like-145032">South Korea</a> promised to create 1.9 million jobs by developing green technologies. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/22/china-pledges-to-reach-carbon-neutrality-before-2060">China</a> presented a plan to become carbon neutral before 2060. </p>
<p>And, on September 16, European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, promoted the <a href="https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_20_940">EU Green Deal</a> as the bloc’s strategy for reviving economic activity. In her speech, she pledged to cut at least 55% of the EU’s total emissions by <a href="https://www.euronews.com/2020/09/16/watch-live-eu-commission-president-ursula-von-der-leyen-delivers-state-of-the-union-speech">2030</a> – a goal that the European parliament later increased to 60%.</p>
<p>World leaders have rightly seized on the pandemic as a chance to build more sustainable economies, whether it’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/apr/20/green-energy-could-drive-covid-19-recovery-international-renewable-energy-agency">boosting investment in green energy</a> or curbing unemployment by announcing <a href="https://www.housingtoday.co.uk/news/chancellor-announces-50m-social-housing-retrofit-programme/5106864.article">new jobs retrofitting housing</a>. What’s missing though, are the loud and inconvenient voices from the streets. </p>
<p><a href="https://fridaysforfuture.org/">Fridays for Future</a> started as a lone protest outside the Swedish parliament by Greta Thunberg in August 2018, but it has quickly grown into <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/climate-strikes-66457">a global movement</a>. The pandemic forced the school climate strikes to <a href="https://theconversation.com/environmental-activism-goes-digital-in-lockdown-but-could-it-change-the-movement-for-good-137203">move online</a>, largely shifting the burgeoning youth movement from the public eye. Yet, the vibrant protests that catapulted climate change to the political fore are actually needed now more than ever. </p>
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<h2>Expanding the debate</h2>
<p>Many of the <a href="https://platform2020redesign.org">green recovery plans</a> proposed by governments so far include investments in renewable energy, or measures to modernise polluting industries such as steel or cement production. For example, the EU announced a <a href="https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_20_1250">€1 billion innovation fund</a> in July 2020 to finance breakthrough technologies in renewable energy, energy storage, or carbon capture.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcomm.2020.00048/full">But our research</a> shows that many young climate activists are <a href="https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/05/27/clim-m27.html">critical</a> of reviving growth, only a little greener, while leaving existing political and economic structures intact. In Germany, youth climate groups have <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/24042020/germany-energy-renewables-solar-wind-climate-change-warming">led calls</a> to bring electricity utilities under the ownership of local communities. They argue that switching to renewables should involve redistributing the power held by energy corporations, rather than simply boosting how much green energy they generate.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/five-ways-to-kickstart-a-green-recovery-141115">Five ways to kickstart a green recovery</a>
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<p>These demands weren’t inevitable at the movement’s outset. Many of these arguments about who should own and lead the green transition were fomented in August 2019, when climate strikers met for a summer congress in Germany. Here, they discussed alternatives to decarbonising society through green economic growth, such as redefining development itself so that <a href="https://theconversation.com/green-growth-is-trusted-to-fix-climate-change-heres-the-problem-with-that-120785">growth isn’t the goal</a>. One month later, Thunberg criticised world leaders for providing “fairy tales of <a href="https://www.npr.org/2019/09/23/763452863/transcript-greta-thunbergs-speech-at-the-u-n-climate-action-summit?t=1601993188713">eternal economic growth</a>” at the UN Climate Action Summit in New York. </p>
<p>Making these arguments heard is essential for a lively debate about recovery plans that will shape all of our futures. An active youth movement can shift the debate from the terrain of immediate economic benefits, to questions of equity and ownership which current green recovery debates mostly lack.</p>
<h2>An inconvenient youth</h2>
<p>It can also amplify the voices of people most vulnerable to the enfolding climate crisis. In her <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1znxp8b65E&ab_channel=FridaysForFuture">first speech</a> at a UN climate change conference in December 2018, Thunberg <a href="https://www.gbnews.ch/greta-thunbergs-speech-to-the-world/">spoke on behalf of Climate Justice Now</a>, a transnational network representing indigenous people, communities of colour and low-income families – people who are <a href="https://theconversation.com/cyclone-idai-rich-countries-are-to-blame-for-disasters-like-this-heres-how-they-can-make-amends-113971">disproportionally affected by climate change</a>. </p>
<p>In July 2020, Fridays for Future activists published an <a href="https://climateemergencyeu.org/">open letter</a> to world leaders urging them to reckon with the deep injustices at the core of the climate crisis. Those least responsible for climate change, they argue, are most affected by its consequences.</p>
<p>Following protests on September 25 – the first since the pandemic began – Thunberg criticised the EU for “<a href="https://medium.com/@GretaThunberg/the-eu-is-cheating-with-numbers-and-stealing-our-future-1aca3e9a295f">cheating with numbers</a>” in its pledge to cut emissions by two-thirds in ten years. The target, she explained, does not account for international aviation, shipping, or goods consumed in the EU but manufactured abroad. She said:</p>
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<p>There can be no social justice without climate justice. And there can be no climate justice unless we acknowledge the fact that we have dumped large parts of our emissions overseas, exploiting cheap labour and poor working conditions as well as weaker environmental regulations.</p>
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<p>The stubbornness of youth climate activists can help raise the ambition of governments devising economic recoveries from COVID-19, and ensure they address the needs of the most vulnerable. Coronavirus might constrain outdoor organising, but the climate movement’s influence remains vital for widening the debate about the kind of world that emerges from the pandemic.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/147519/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jens Marquardt receives funding from the Swedish Research Council for Sustainable Development, Formas.</span></em></p>Activists can broaden the purview of green recovery plans and highlight issues of climate justice.Jens Marquardt, Postdoctoral Researcher in Environmental Social Science, Stockholm UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1372032020-05-07T11:43:57Z2020-05-07T11:43:57ZEnvironmental activism goes digital in lockdown – but could it change the movement for good?<p>The environmental movement’s past recently collided with its future. April 22 marked the <a href="https://theconversation.com/earth-day-at-50-what-the-environmental-holiday-means-today-136415">50th anniversary of the first Earth Day</a>, a milestone for environmentalism. A few days later, a global school strike was organised by <a href="https://fridaysforfuture.org/">Fridays for Future</a>, the international coalition of young people inspired by Greta Thunberg’s protests against climate change. But after months of careful planning, both occasions were upended by the COVID-19 pandemic – and went online instead. </p>
<p>So when social distancing measures are eased, will protests return to the streets, or do these events mark a turning point?</p>
<p>In 1970, an estimated 20 million Americans (10% of the US population at the time) participated in the <a href="https://www.earthday.org/history">first Earth Day</a>. Back then, US senator Gaylord Nelson conceived of a national “teach-in” to raise environmental awareness and recruited Harvard law student Denis Hayes to organise the event.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/earth-day-at-50-what-the-environmental-holiday-means-today-136415">Earth Day at 50 – what the environmental holiday means today</a>
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<p><a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/20528196">Teach-ins</a> had emerged in the mid-1960s as a hybrid of student sit-ins and informal lectures in opposition to the Vietnam War. Rather than going on strike, teachers and students occupied classrooms instead. According to environmental historian <a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780865477742">Adam Rome</a>, 1,500 universities and 10,000 schools held Earth Day teach-ins in April 1970, “nurturing a generation of activists.”</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/333086/original/file-20200506-49546-1jp6kab.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/333086/original/file-20200506-49546-1jp6kab.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/333086/original/file-20200506-49546-1jp6kab.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/333086/original/file-20200506-49546-1jp6kab.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/333086/original/file-20200506-49546-1jp6kab.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/333086/original/file-20200506-49546-1jp6kab.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/333086/original/file-20200506-49546-1jp6kab.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">A postage stamp issued to commemorate the first Earth Day, April 1970.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/issued-1970-focus-attention-on-problem-21432016">Michael Rega/Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>In the decades that followed, the environmental movement grew into a political and cultural force. Yet subsequent Earth Days failed to capture the urgency and grassroots passion of the original.</p>
<p>The 50th anniversary Earth Day sought to address this by going back to its roots. Teach-ins were planned for classrooms and campuses across the world, but COVID-19 closed schools. The day of action evolved into a 12-hour <a href="https://www.twitch.tv/videos/599261588">live-stream</a> during which actors, athletes, musicians, politicians, and even <a href="https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2020-04/pope-francis-general-audience-earth-day-common-home-vulnerable.html">Pope Francis</a> shared messages of environmental stewardship and climate action. </p>
<p>The school climate strikes originated in August 2018, when 15-year-old Greta Thunberg skipped school to protest inaction on climate change outside the Swedish parliament. </p>
<p>Within little more than a year, <a href="https://fridaysforfuture.org/what-we-do/strike-statistics/list-of-countries/">seven million</a> students and their supporters were joining <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/climatestrikeonline">school strikes</a> around the world and Thunberg was making headlines for her scathing speeches at the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFkQSGyeCWg">UN climate conference in Poland</a> and [World Economic Forum in Davos]. Another global strike was scheduled for April 2020, but COVID-19 again pushed the event online. </p>
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<p>The school strikes and annual Earth Day celebrations reflect different generations of environmental activism and different philosophies of protest. Yet both have been guided by the environmental slogan “think globally, act locally”. During the pandemic, environmental activists are now thinking globally and acting digitally.</p>
<h2>‘Clicktivism’ and digital natives</h2>
<p>I’m researching <a href="https://theconversation.com/homeschooling-during-coronavirus-five-ways-to-teach-children-about-climate-change-131411">climate change education</a> and youth climate activism in the UK. Like the protesters, I’ve been forced to adapt my plans and have been exploring the digital side of climate activism. </p>
<p>Online activism has been called <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/1944-2866.POI355">“clicktivism”</a>, or, disparagingly, “slacktivism”. It’s been characterised as impulsive, noncommittal and easily replicated, emphasising the lower risks and costs of political expression on social media versus protest and political engagement in the real world. But the relationship between digital technology and social movements is <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691159225/political-turbulence">more complicated</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/digitally-enabled-social-change">Researchers are split</a> on the precise role of digital activism. From one perspective, campaigners can use social media to “supersize” their public engagement. This helps them to reach more people and bypass traditional media channels. Other researchers emphasise the power of the internet to help activists self-organise. Without the structure or hierarchy of traditional organisations, digital platforms can allow completely new forms of activism to flourish.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/beyond-hashtags-how-a-new-wave-of-digital-activists-is-changing-society-57502">Beyond hashtags: how a new wave of digital activists is changing society</a>
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<p>A recent <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2015.992600">study</a> found that climate advocacy groups that started on the internet, such as <a href="https://350.org/">350.org</a>, have different online strategies, tactics and theories of change compared to older environmental groups such as Greenpeace. Founded in 2008, 350.org (which is both a URL and reference to the safe level of 350 parts per million carbon dioxide in the atmosphere) led the first wave of internet-savvy, youth-driven environmental organisations.</p>
<p>Successful digital campaigns at 350.org have been described as a <a href="https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780190498986.001.0001/acref-9780190498986-e-404">virtuous cycle</a> where online tools spur offline action – the results of which can be documented and shared online to inspire further action.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/333090/original/file-20200506-49556-5n00g3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/333090/original/file-20200506-49556-5n00g3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/333090/original/file-20200506-49556-5n00g3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/333090/original/file-20200506-49556-5n00g3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/333090/original/file-20200506-49556-5n00g3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/333090/original/file-20200506-49556-5n00g3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/333090/original/file-20200506-49556-5n00g3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Modern activists can film demonstrations using smartphones and share them online, reaching a much wider audience.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/philadelphia-pa-august-2-2018-environmental-1161234136">Rachael Warriner/Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>It’s too early to say how the school climate strikes of 2019 have influenced the broader movement, but <a href="https://arxiv.org/pdf/1912.05123">current research</a> is exploring how climate strikers are using Instagram and how collective identities on social media may drive collective action. As <a href="https://www.marcprensky.com/writing/Prensky%20-%20Digital%20Natives,%20Digital%20Immigrants%20-%20Part1.pdf">“digital natives”</a>, these young climate activists grew up with the internet, smartphones and social media. Their movement uses memes and hashtags across YouTube, Instagram and Twitter, where Thunberg has more than four million followers.</p>
<p>While COVID-19 prevents offline action, thousands of #ClimateStrikeOnline social media posts show solitary protesters around the world armed with handmade signs, a virtual echo of where the movement started. When it comes to climate activism, digital natives are now leading the way. The revolution will be live-streamed.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/137203/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>William Finnegan receives funding from EPSRC. </span></em></p>During the pandemic, climate activists are thinking globally and acting digitally.William Finnegan, PhD Candidate in Climate Education and Activism, University of OxfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1290362019-12-19T21:43:01Z2019-12-19T21:43:01ZA year of resistance: How youth protests shaped the discussion on climate change<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/307988/original/file-20191219-11924-1up2b1o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=350%2C0%2C5051%2C3692&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Millions of youth have participated in climate strikes, negotiations, press conferences and events, demanding urgent climate action this year. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Greta Thunberg made history again this month when she was named Time Magazine’s Person of the Year. The 16-year-old has become the face of youth climate action, going from a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/sep/01/swedish-15-year-old-cutting-class-to-fight-the-climate-crisis">lone child sitting outside the Swedish parliament building in mid-2018</a> to a symbol for climate strikers — young and old — around the world.</p>
<p>Thunberg was far from the first young person to speak up in an effort to hold the powerful accountable for their inaction on climate change, yet the recognition of her efforts come at a time when world leaders will have to decide whether — or with how much effort — they will tackle climate change. Their actions or inactions will determine how much more vocal youth will become in 2020.</p>
<p>Thunberg coined the hashtag #FridaysforFuture in August 2018, inspiring students globally to hold their own climate strikes. Many of them argued that adults were not doing enough to address the <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15">climate catastrophe</a>. Today’s youth saw themselves on the generational front lines of climate change, so they walked out of their schools to demand transformative action.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/307976/original/file-20191219-11951-5ga8zt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/307976/original/file-20191219-11951-5ga8zt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307976/original/file-20191219-11951-5ga8zt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307976/original/file-20191219-11951-5ga8zt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307976/original/file-20191219-11951-5ga8zt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=512&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307976/original/file-20191219-11951-5ga8zt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=512&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307976/original/file-20191219-11951-5ga8zt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=512&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Students take part in a climate protest in London in March 2019.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Matt Dunham</span></span>
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<p>The strikes spread throughout the fall and winter, and spilled over to 2019. Students in the United Kingdom joined the movement on Feb. 15, 2019 with a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/feb/15/the-beginning-of-great-change-greta-thunberg-hails-school-climate-strikes">mass mobilization</a>, on the heels of Australia, Switzerland, Germany, Japan and many other countries around the world. They skipped school because they felt there was no point to school without a future, and their resistance took their grievances around <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22176-8_21">generational injustice</a> directly to elected officials.</p>
<p>Fridays for Future now estimates that more than <a href="https://www.fridaysforfuture.org/events/graph">9.6 million strikers</a> in 261 countries have participated in climate strikes. And Thunberg herself has met with hundreds of communities and numerous heads of state. While Thunberg’s celebrity has paved the way for the climate strikes to scale up — her work rests on decades of climate activism that have made this year’s mobilizations possible.</p>
<h2>Environmental justice momentum</h2>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/307978/original/file-20191219-11909-1p0ks5p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/307978/original/file-20191219-11909-1p0ks5p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307978/original/file-20191219-11909-1p0ks5p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307978/original/file-20191219-11909-1p0ks5p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307978/original/file-20191219-11909-1p0ks5p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307978/original/file-20191219-11909-1p0ks5p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307978/original/file-20191219-11909-1p0ks5p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Youth climate activist Isra Hirsi will be 27 in 2030, the year that scientists say the planet will be stuck on a path towards dangerous warming.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin</span></span>
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<p>Indigenous activists like <a href="https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/wd7y85/protesters-keep-shutting-down-the-line-9-oil-pipeline">Vanessa Gray</a>, <a href="https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/08/red-deal-green-new-deal-ecosocialism-decolonization-indigenous-resistance-environment">Nick Estes</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/CBCIndigenous/status/1178019099152175104">Autumn Peltier</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/KanahusFreedom/status/1179181701341339648">Kanahus Manuel</a> and many others whose work bridges sovereignty and environmental damage have also played an important role. They have helped shift the climate movement toward the framework of climate justice, which acknowledges the <a href="https://doi.org/10.3167/ares.2018.090101">intersections of colonialism, racialization, capitalism and climate change</a>.</p>
<p>This moment also builds on <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0002764200043004003">environmental justice movements</a>. Young activists like <a href="https://twitter.com/israhirsi/status/1130700064677093376">Isra Hirsi</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/canada_strike/status/1179074926508171265">Cricket Cheng</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/ColinDMello/status/1177627594612772865">Maya Menezes</a> and <a href="https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/8xwvq3/11-young-climate-justice-activists-you-need-to-pay-attention-to-beyond-greta-thunberg">others</a> have been building movements where a racial justice lens brings the climate movement into focus. </p>
<p>While these leaders may not have been recognized with Time Magazine’s Person of the Year, their work has significantly reshaped the climate movement. They are <a href="https://doi.org/10.3102/0002831218804496">helping politicize</a> a new generation of climate activists who understand climate change not as an isolated phenomenon, but one with roots in a capitalist system that is inherently racist, colonial, sexist and ableist.</p>
<h2>Indigenous-led resistance</h2>
<p>This year has also seen Indigenous-led resistance to climate change and the related oil, gas, fracking, hydro and other natural resource extraction too. </p>
<p>Secwepemc leaders and their allies have built <a href="http://tinyhousewarriors.com">tiny houses</a> to prevent the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion from being forced through unceded Secwepemc territory. In Mi'kmaqi and Wolastoqey territory, there’s been <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/shale-gas-moratorium-exemption-sussex-indigenous-consultation-protests-1.5167450">resistance to fracking</a>. Across northern Manitoba, Cree and Nishnaabe communities are resisting <a href="https://winnipegsun.com/news/local-news/indigenous-leaders-activists-take-protest-to-manitoba-hydros-doorstep">hydro projects</a> they say will devastate their communities.</p>
<p>In British Columbia, nations have <a href="https://www.vicnews.com/business/b-c-indigenous-group-vows-to-battle-site-c-dam-in-court/">fought the Site C dam</a>, which threatens to flood communities, change watersheds and escalate violence against women through <a href="https://www.secwepemculecw.org/no-mans-camps">work camps filled with men</a>. Inuit and Cree communities in Labrador have <a href="https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/j5zbpx/how-activists-are-resisting-a-megadam-that-threatens-cultural-genocid">resisted the Muskrat Falls hydro project</a>. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/307982/original/file-20191219-11951-1uoh4jd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/307982/original/file-20191219-11951-1uoh4jd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307982/original/file-20191219-11951-1uoh4jd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307982/original/file-20191219-11951-1uoh4jd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307982/original/file-20191219-11951-1uoh4jd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307982/original/file-20191219-11951-1uoh4jd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307982/original/file-20191219-11951-1uoh4jd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The construction site of the Muskrat Falls hydroelectric facility in Newfoundland and Labrador in 2015.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Andrew Vaughan</span></span>
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<p>This mirrors Indigenous-led environmental action against colonial energy projects around the world, including work in <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2019/11/beyond-strikes-for-these-youths-climate-activism-starts-at-home/">Karen communities in Thailand</a>, Indigenous peoples in <a href="https://www.frontlinedefenders.org/en/organization/movimiento-rios-vivos-antioquia-mrva">Colombia</a>, Waorani peoples in <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/an-uncommon-victory-for-an-indigenous-tribe-in-the-amazon?verso=true">Ecuador</a>, among <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-49482095">Saami peoples</a> and countless other Indigenous nations.</p>
<h2>Rejecting adult inaction</h2>
<p>The climate strikes are an example of youth becoming politicized, rejecting adult inaction and demanding more from governments. In the coming years, we can expect the climate movement to keep growing, become even more <a href="https://doi.org/10.3102%2F0002831218804496">politicized</a> and escalate the intensity of tactics. </p>
<p>When governments resist reasonable requests, decades of social movements teach us that activists escalate. We can look at the histories of the <a href="https://surviveaplague.com">HIV/AIDS movement</a>, the <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674447271">Civil Rights movement</a>, <a href="https://libcom.org/library/return-source-selected-speeches-amilcar-cabral">African liberation struggles</a> and “<a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/131609/poor-peoples-movements-by-frances-fox-piven-and-richard-cloward/">poor people’s movements</a>,” which show us that when people get pushed out, they turn up the pressure. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/kids-facing-effects-of-climate-change-are-taking-their-governments-to-court-126419">Kids facing effects of climate change are taking their governments to court</a>
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<p>That escalation is necessary to win substantive change. Escalation is not usually seen by the public as nice as polite entreaties, but research clearly shows that <a href="https://btlbooks.com/book/direct-action-gets-the-goods">direct action leads to change</a>.</p>
<p>Greta’s recognition by Time Magazine will continue to inspire more young people to join their peers in demanding bold climate action like the <a href="https://theleap.org/portfolio-items/green-new-deal/">Green New Deal</a> and to use the legal system as a tool by suing governments over climate inaction. </p>
<p>If elected officials fail to act, we can expect these young people to adopt more <a href="https://theconversation.com/extinction-rebellion-disruption-and-arrests-can-bring-social-change-115741">disruptive tactics</a> and do <a href="https://www.sunrisemovement.org">the work on the ground</a> to <a href="https://our-time.ca">elect new leaders</a>. Even if they can’t yet vote themselves, there are many ways they can- and will continue to- shape our politics and our future.</p>
<p>[ <em>You’re smart and curious about the world. So are The Conversation’s authors and editors.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/ca/newsletters?utm_source=TCCA&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=youresmart">You can read us daily by subscribing to our newsletter</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/129036/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joe Curnow has received funding from the Canadian Tri-Council and the Spencer Foundation. She is affiliated with climate activist organizations across Canada. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anjali Helferty receives funding from the Canadian Tri-Council. She is affiliated with climate activist organizations across Canada.</span></em></p>The actions of today’s leaders on climate change will determine how much more vocal youth will become in 2020.Joe Curnow, Assistant Professor of Education, University of ManitobaAnjali Helferty, PhD Candidate at Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of TorontoLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1244842019-10-02T20:04:11Z2019-10-02T20:04:11ZIf warming exceeds 2°C, Antarctica’s melting ice sheets could raise seas 20 metres in coming centuries<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/295103/original/file-20191001-173375-c9fcg4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=65%2C65%2C5390%2C3566&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">During the Pliocene, up to one third of Antarctica’s ice sheet melted, causing sea-level rise of 20 metres.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">from www.shutterstock.com</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>We know that our planet has experienced warmer periods in the past, during the <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate1504?proof=true1">Pliocene geological epoch</a> around three million years ago. </p>
<p>Our <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1619-z">research</a>, published today, shows that up to one third of Antarctica’s ice sheet melted during this period, causing sea levels to rise by as much as 20 metres above present levels in coming centuries. </p>
<p>We were able to measure past changes in sea level by drilling cores at a site in New Zealand, known as the Whanganui Basin, which contains shallow marine sediments of arguably the highest resolution in the world.</p>
<p>Using a new method we developed to predict the water level from the size of sand particle moved by waves, we constructed a record of global sea-level change with significantly more precision than previously possible. </p>
<p>The Pliocene was the last time atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations were above 400 parts per million and Earth’s temperature was 2°C warmer than pre-industrial times. We show that warming of more than 2°C could set off widespread melting in Antarctica once again and our planet could be hurtling back to the future, towards a climate that existed three million years ago.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/not-convinced-on-the-need-for-urgent-climate-action-heres-what-happens-to-our-planet-between-1-5-c-and-2-c-of-global-warming-123817">Not convinced on the need for urgent climate action? Here's what happens to our planet between 1.5°C and 2°C of global warming</a>
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<h2>Overshooting the Paris climate target</h2>
<p>Last week we saw unprecedented <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/sep/27/climate-crisis-6-million-people-join-latest-wave-of-worldwide-protests">global protests</a> under the banner of Greta Thunberg’s #FridaysForFuture climate strikes, as the urgency of keeping global warming below the <a href="https://unfccc.int/process-and-meetings/the-paris-agreement/the-paris-agreement">Paris Agreement</a> target of 2°C hit home. Thunberg captured collective frustration when she chastised the United Nations for not acting earlier on the scientific evidence. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2019/09/23/greta-thunberg-vows-that-if-un-doesnt-tackle-climate-change-we-will-never-forgive-you/">Her plea</a> resonated as she reminded us that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>With today’s emissions levels, that remaining CO₂ budget [1.5°C] will be entirely gone in less than eight and a half years. </p>
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<p>At the current rate of global emissions we <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/">may be back in the Pliocene by 2030</a> and we will have exceeded the 2°C Paris target. One of the most critical questions facing humanity is how much and how fast global sea levels will rise. </p>
<p>According to the recent <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/srocc/home/">special report on the world’s oceans and cryosphere</a> by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (<a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/">IPCC</a>), glaciers and polar ice sheets continue to lose mass at an accelerating rate, but the contribution of polar ice sheets, in particular the Antarctic ice sheet, to future sea level rise remains difficult to constrain. </p>
<p>If we continue to follow our current emissions trajectory, the median (66% probability) global sea level reached by the end of the century will be 1.2 metres higher than now, with two metres a plausible upper limit (5% probability). But of course climate change doesn’t magically stop after the year 2100.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/with-15-other-children-greta-thunberg-has-filed-a-un-complaint-against-5-countries-heres-what-itll-achieve-124090">With 15 other children, Greta Thunberg has filed a UN complaint against 5 countries. Here’s what it’ll achieve</a>
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<h2>Drilling back to the future</h2>
<p>To better predict what we are committing the world’s future coastlines to we need to understand polar ice sheet sensitivity. If we want to know how much the oceans will rise at 400ppm CO₂, the Pliocene epoch is a good comparison. </p>
<p>Back in 2015, we drilled cores of sediment deposited during the Pliocene, preserved beneath the rugged hill country at the Whanganui Basin. One of us (Timothy Naish) has worked in this area for almost 30 years and identified more than <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0277379197000759">50 fluctuations in global sea level</a> during the last 3.5 million years of Earth’s history. Global sea levels had gone up and down in response to natural climate cycles, known as <a href="https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/Milankovitch/milankovitch_2.php">Milankovitch cycles</a>, which are caused by long-term changes in Earths solar orbit every 20,000, 40,000 and 100,000 years. These changes in turn cause polar ice sheets to grow or melt. </p>
<p>While sea levels were thought to have fluctuated by several tens of metres, up until now efforts to <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012821X13006006">reconstruct the precise amplitude had been thwarted</a> by difficulties due to Earth deformation processes and the incomplete nature of many of the cycles. </p>
<p>Our <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1619-z">research</a> used a well-established theoretical relationship between the size of the particles transported by waves on the continental shelf and the depth to the seabed. We then applied this method to 800 metres of drill core and outcrop, representing continuous sediment sequences that span a time period from 2.5 to 3.3 million years ago. </p>
<p>We show that during the Pliocene, global sea levels regularly fluctuated between five to 25 metres. We accounted for local tectonic land movements and regional sea-level changes caused by gravitational and crustal changes to determine the sea-level estimates, known as the <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1619-z">PlioSeaNZ sea-level record</a>. This provides an approximation of changes in global mean sea level.</p>
<h2>Antarctica’s contribution to sea-level rise</h2>
<p>Our <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1619-z">study</a> also shows that most of the sea-level rise during the Pliocene came from Antarctica’s ice sheets. During the warm Pliocene, the geography of Earth’s continents and oceans and the size of polar ice sheets were similar to today, with only a small ice sheet on Greenland during the warmest period. The melting of the Greenland ice sheet would have contributed at most five metres to the maximum 25 metres of global sea-level rise recorded at Whanganui Basin.</p>
<p>Of critical concern is that over <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/srocc/home/">90% of the heat from global warming</a> to date has gone into the ocean. Much of it has gone into the Southern Ocean, which bathes the margins of Antarctica’s ice sheet. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/new-research-shows-that-antarcticas-largest-floating-ice-shelf-is-highly-sensitive-to-warming-of-the-ocean-121864">New research shows that Antarctica's largest floating ice shelf is highly sensitive to warming of the ocean</a>
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<p>Already, we are observing warm circumpolar deep water upwelling and <a href="https://science.sciencemag.org/content/341/6151/1236">entering ice shelf cavities</a> in several sites around Antarctica today. Along the Amundsen Sea coast of West Antarctica, where the ocean has been heating the most, the <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/nature10968">ice sheet is thinning and retreating the fastest</a>. One third of Antarctica’s ice sheet — the equivalent to up to 20 metres of sea-level rise — is grounded below sea level and <a href="https://www.the-cryosphere.net/7/375/2013/">vulnerable to widespread collapse from ocean heating</a>. </p>
<p>Our study has important implications for the stability and sensitivity of the Antarctic ice sheet and its potential to contribute to future sea levels. It supports the concept that a tipping point in the Antarctic ice sheet may be crossed if global temperatures are allowed to rise by more than 2°C. This could result in large parts of the ice sheet being committed to melt-down over the coming centuries, reshaping shorelines around the world.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/124484/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The study, which was funded by the Royal Society Te Apārangi’s Marsden Fund, also involved Dr Gavin Dunbar from the Victoria University’s Antarctic Research Centre, as well as other scientists from GNS Science, Waikato University, and from the Netherlands, the United States and Chile.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Timothy Naish does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>New research shows that warming by more than 2°C could be a tipping point for Antarctica’s ice sheets, resulting in widespread meltdown and changes to the world’s shorelines for centuries to come.Georgia Rose Grant, Postdoctoral Research Assistant, Paleontology Team, GNS ScienceTimothy Naish, Professor, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of WellingtonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1238642019-09-29T12:12:57Z2019-09-29T12:12:57ZReasserting proper relationships of accountability in the Age of Greta<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/294657/original/file-20190929-185403-dfgvzm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C2995%2C2007&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, centre, takes part in a climate strike march in Montreal, Friday, Sept. 27, 2019.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Graham Hughes/THE CANADIAN PRESS</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>She sits small on the large stage, her face contorted trying to contain emotion as she labours to push her words out; on the brink of crying. She tells those listening: </p>
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<p>“This is all wrong, I shouldn’t be up here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean.” </p>
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<p>And this is what we see and hear as we watch Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old girl who just one year ago started a global climate movement, speaking to world leaders meeting in New York for the <a href="https://www.un.org/en/climatechange/">United Nations Climate Summit</a>.</p>
<p>The adults on stage watch her, the audience watches, the young people outside the UN holding signs watch, and that moment on stage in which she holds so many of us at the edge of our seat is played over and over in an endless chain of social media tweets and likes. We all watch with some mixture of fascination, awe, inspiration and curiosity. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Greta Thunberg’s speech at the UN Climate Summit on Sep. 23, 3019.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Yet there is a line past which Thunberg’s activism can become spectacle. The young person, who in her own words has felt the loss of her childhood because of empty promises from state leaders who were supposed to be the keepers of a healthy planet for her generation, becomes a human sacrifice that none of us should accept.</p>
<h2>Unacceptable sacrifice</h2>
<p>Her suffering - for our collective benefit - becomes part of what we used to deem an unacceptable sacrifice, and in this time of desperate politics, adults allow it to continue. It is time that Thunberg, who sparked millions of people to action, got some rest. It is time for proper accountability relationships to be redrawn between citizens and their political representatives, consumers and producers, civil society organizations and their members, children and adults.</p>
<p>This article is directed at the adults left in the room.</p>
<p>After all, when our states <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/20190926-france-s-2020-budget-cuts-taxes-in-bid-to-placate-yellow-vests">raise taxes</a> or run deficits, wage war abroad or build infrastructure at home, <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/manitoba-contract-extension-doctors-manitoba-wage-freeze-bill-1.5214477">freeze wages</a> or create training programs, <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/flint">legislate clean water</a> or relax industrial waste pollution, we don’t rely on our children to scream loud enough for our governments to create the change we need. </p>
<p>We have <a href="http://doi.org/10.1162/GLEP_a_00349">accountability mechanisms in place</a>. We agree on shared purposes, establish who is going to be held to account, to whom and for what. Then we regulate processes, standards and sanctions.</p>
<p>In our regular lives, we read to become better informed and ask political candidates hard questions during election campaigns. We join organizations, discuss the issues with our neighbours on our street and create or sign petitions. Once these political demands have been articulated, we hold public leaders and private companies to their promises by naming, shaming or <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-41594672">leaving them</a>. </p>
<p>We vote with our ballots and with our wallets as consumers to orient social action. We try to buy goods produced responsibly and shun those suspect of being socially or environmentally damaging. We take legal action when required. We cajole each other to keep defending agreed goals in our workplace and our neighbourhoods.</p>
<h2>Collective actions</h2>
<p>Our best social achievements are the products of relentlessly negotiating goals and then enforcing them until we <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9781315846545">accomplish peace</a>, a <a href="https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/06/seattle-fight-for-15-minimum-wage">liveable wage</a> or <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/09/environmental-victories-in-photos/">a safe</a> place to live and thrive. Though many of these hard-fought battles have been preceded by untold human suffering and environmental disasters. </p>
<p>Just as we have mechanisms to create rules and assign responsibility for public, private and voluntary action in our diverse societies, we also have established modes of sanctioning rule-breakers who individually, and for private benefit, undermine our collective public goods. These accountability mechanisms of our everyday lives need to reassert themselves in the most comprehensive way possible as we face an existential threat to our planet. </p>
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<span class="caption">People with the Clay and Paper Theatre dance during the Climate Strike in Toronto on Friday, Sept. 27, 2019.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Christopher Katsarov</span></span>
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<p>This week has been about a collective will to prioritize our quality of life over “endless economic growth,” in Thunberg’s own words, and in some cases setting up specific accountability metrics. </p>
<h2>Performing accountability</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/toronto-tory-climate-emergency-1.5291269">City mayors</a>, including Toronto’s John Tory, have declared climate emergencies, joining 800 other cities around the world who have done this so far. <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2019/09/19/business/climate-strike-companies-trnd/index.html">Companies</a> are supporting the climate strikes by closing stores, temporarily ceasing operations and launching their own digital strikes in which their websites go dark.</p>
<p>Giants like Amazon are <a href="https://fortune.com/2019/09/19/jeff-bezos-details-amazons-net-zero-carbon-emissions-2040-goals-climate-change/">pledging to drastically reduce their carbon emissions ahead of their own targets</a>. Pension funds and insurers are committing to carbon neutral portfolios by 2050. Some academic institutions, like <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/university-of-california-system-divestment-fossil-fuels-886203/">the University of California</a>, are also divesting from fossil fuel holdings their billions of dollars in pension funds and endowments. </p>
<p>Some <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/may/17/why-the-guardian-is-changing-the-language-it-uses-about-the-environment">media outlets</a> are changing the language they use when reporting on climate, introducing into their style guides wording like “climate crisis” instead of “climate change.” </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/climate-change-is-the-defining-issue-of-our-time-were-giving-it-the-attention-it-deserves-123592">Climate change is the defining issue of our time – we're giving it the attention it deserves</a>
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<p>Some professors are <a href="https://www.chronicle.com/article/Don-t-Teach-Strike-/247185">cancelling their regular classes and holding teach-ins</a>, open and participatory fora for lecturing and debating large social issues that are reminiscent of ones that <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/20528196">helped galvanize student protests against the war in Vietnam</a>.</p>
<p>Children, who are so much at the core of this fight, have resorted to domestic courts and complaint mechanisms in international conventions. Most recently they have <a href="https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/16-children-including-greta-thunberg-file-landmark-complaint-united-nations">filed a complaint to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, against the five largest emitting states that are signatories of the convention</a>. They accuse states of violating their rights by subjecting them to the devastating effects of climate change.</p>
<p>To reassert proper relationships of accountability, the next steps must include ensuring compliance and effecting sanctions wherever failures to deliver results start to emerge. After all, we cannot set standards if we as citizens, consumers and members of civil society are not equally committed to enforcing them.</p>
<p>Just as we sanction those who undermine our political resolve for peace, equity or human security we have to sanction with all the accountability mechanisms we already have at our disposal those who undermine carbon emission standards and maximum carbon budgets. Adults must reassert and enforce the collective will – not marvel at a young person’s self-control on a global stage to get that work done.</p>
<p>[ <em><a href="https://theconversation.com/ca/newsletters?utm_source=TCCA&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=thanksforreading">Thanks for reading! We can send you The Conversation’s stories every day in an informative email. Sign up today.</a></em> ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/123864/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Teresa Kramarz does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg has inspired the cross-country climate marches, but accountability lies with governments and corporations.Teresa Kramarz, Associate Professor Munk School of Global Affairs and Co-director Environmental Governance Lab, University of TorontoLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1242522019-09-27T23:43:43Z2019-09-27T23:43:43ZGreta Thunberg’s radical climate change fairy tale is exactly the story we need<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/294621/original/file-20190927-185399-1ie4751.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C4687%2C2986&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Swedish activist and student Greta Thunberg, centre, takes part in the Climate Strike in Montreal on Friday, Sept. 27, 2019.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Paul Chiasson</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It has been just over a year since 16-year-old Greta Thunberg started her “school strike for climate” outside the Swedish parliament in Stockholm. Since then, she has spoken to increasingly large crowds — including most recently in Montréal. </p>
<p>But there are many reasons why people are still talking about Thunberg’s Sept. 23 <a href="https://www.npr.org/2019/09/23/763452863/transcript-greta-thunbergs-speech-at-the-u-n-climate-action-summit">speech at the United Nations Climate Action Summit</a>. She spoke with knowledge, clarity and passion well beyond her years. </p>
<p>What I find especially significant about the talk is her inclusion of a critique of economic growth in the climate change story frame. “We are in the beginning of mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth,” Thunberg said.</p>
<p>Scholars and activists share Thunberg’s concerns about the current system of endless economic growth. For example, Prof. David Barash powerfully equates endless growth to a Ponzi scheme. It is a system, he says, “<a href="https://www.chronicle.com/article/We-Are-All-Madoffs/48182">predicated on the illusion that it will always be possible to make future payments owing to yet more exploitation down the road</a>.” </p>
<p>Economist Juliet Schor similarly warns about the resource depletion implications for economic growth. She highlights that endless growth will lead to “<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7258237-plenitude">blowback… which is now happening with the climate system, oceans and forests</a>.” </p>
<p>Prof. Thomas Homer-Dixon succinctly offers that “<a href="https://homerdixon.com/writing/books/the-upside-of-down/">it’s becoming increasingly clear that endless material growth is incompatible with the long-term viability of Earth’s environment</a>.” And writer Naomi Klein refers to the <a href="https://thischangeseverything.org/book/">“god of economic growth,” powerfully proposing that “our economic system and our planetary system are now at war.”</a> </p>
<h2>Where are the stories?</h2>
<p>Thoughtful and well-researched scholarship makes clear that economic growth and environmental crises are related. And yet non-academic writing linking endless growth economics and climate change is almost non-existent. </p>
<p>I have conducted a content analysis on the <a href="https://www.proquest.com/products-services/Canadian-Major-Dailies.html">Canadian Major Dailies</a> database. In the 12 months prior to Thunberg’s talk there were 850 newspaper articles (including opinion editorials and letters) with “climate change” in the headline. Of these, 372 — or 44 per cent — were related to the economy. And yet only one letter to the editor raised concerns about economic growth in the era of climate change. </p>
<p>This is what makes Thunberg’s mention of “fairy tales of eternal economic growth” so remarkable — she put economic growth and climate change into the same frame.</p>
<p>It is easy to think that economic growth is essential — that we have always had growth at the core of economic policy. But scholars point out that this is not the case. Bill McKibben and Peter Victor point out that our “<a href="http://billmckibben.com/deep-economy.html">fixation</a>” on economic growth as an “<a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10669-010-9290-9">explicit object of government policy</a>” began in the mid-20th century. </p>
<p>And in those 50 years, McKibben highlights that economic growth has not only devastated the planet, <a href="http://billmckibben.com/deep-economy.html">but also fostered inequity, insecurity and “is no longer making us happy.”</a></p>
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<p>
<em>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-counter-intuitive-solution-to-getting-people-to-care-about-climate-change-120136">The counter-intuitive solution to getting people to care about climate change</a>
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<p>Cognitive scientist and linguist George Lakoff offers that “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/17524030903529749">all of our knowledge makes use of frames, and every word is defined through the frames it neurally activates. All thinking and talking involves frames </a>.”</p>
<p>In other words, we understand and act upon climate change based on what has been framed with the climate change stories we are told. </p>
<h2>Time to change the story frames</h2>
<p>The good news is that climate change stories can change. Not that long ago, <a href="https://www.cjc-online.ca/index.php/journal/article/view/2017/3107">there were few stories about climate change</a>. Today, the number has dramatically increased. </p>
<p>Until recently, <a href="https://www.thestar.com/opinion/commentary/2017/09/18/putting-hurricanes-and-climate-change-into-the-same-frame.html">there were not many stories that linked climate change to extreme weather events</a>. Increasingly, these stories are being told. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/294605/original/file-20190927-185364-1kmbn2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=91%2C141%2C5417%2C3375&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/294605/original/file-20190927-185364-1kmbn2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/294605/original/file-20190927-185364-1kmbn2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/294605/original/file-20190927-185364-1kmbn2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/294605/original/file-20190927-185364-1kmbn2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/294605/original/file-20190927-185364-1kmbn2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/294605/original/file-20190927-185364-1kmbn2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Climate change activist Greta Thunberg on the Malizia II boat off Plymouth, England, Wed. Aug. 14, 2019.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo</span></span>
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<p>Now it is time to question economics and foster discussions about the hard decisions and changes that need to be made. It is clear that we cannot simply consume differently — we must consume less. </p>
<p>Now it is time to frame climate change stories with eternal economic growth critiques. Now is the time for climate change frames that question whether a finite planet can sustain eternal growth. Now is the time for climate change frames to include voices like Klein’s, who proposes that “<a href="https://thischangeseverything.org/book/">the frenetic and indiscriminate consumption of essentially disposable products can no longer be the system’s goal</a>.” </p>
<p>And now is the time to be grateful for a 16-year-old who sailed across the ocean and dared to tell the world’s leaders that the fairy tale must end.</p>
<p>[ <em>You’re smart and curious about the world. So are The Conversation’s authors and editors.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/ca/newsletters?utm_source=TCCA&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=youresmart">You can read us daily by subscribing to our newsletter</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/124252/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jennifer Ellen Good does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Economic growth and climate change are related. It is time to question the economics and foster discussions about the hard decisions we must make.Jennifer Ellen Good, Associate Professor Communication, Popular Culture and Film, Brock UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1242202019-09-27T14:38:22Z2019-09-27T14:38:22ZYoung activists are boosting the climate movement, so why all the flak?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/294594/original/file-20190927-185390-ih2m4q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A protester wears a mask that reads "Save Me" during a Global Climate Strike in Ottawa on Sept. 27, 2019. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In late September, the world witnessed millions of youth demonstrating across the globe, <a href="https://climatestrikecanada.org/english">pushing for climate action</a>. This is arguably the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-019-0484-y">global social movement of our time</a>.</p>
<p>One of the movement’s icons has been Greta Thunberg, a Swedish teenager who began a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/sep/01/swedish-15-year-old-cutting-class-to-fight-the-climate-crisis">solo protest outside the Swedish parliament more than a year ago</a>. This week she <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/sep/18/greta-thunberg-testimony-congress-climate-change-action">told U.S. Congress to “listen to the scientists</a>” and gave an impassioned speech at the United Nations, berating adults for leaving it up to youth to make sacrifices and take the lead on climate action. </p>
<p>“<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2019/09/23/greta-thunberg-vows-that-if-un-doesnt-tackle-climate-change-we-will-never-forgive-you/">How dare you?</a>” was heard around the world.</p>
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<span class="caption">Autumn Peltier, a teenage activist from Wiikwemkoong First Nation on Manitoulin Island, Ont., addresses the United Nations General Assembly on March 22, 2018.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO-United Nations-Manuel Elias</span></span>
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<p>Youth and adults worldwide have been moved by Thunberg, and her young companions, including <a href="https://youtu.be/zg60sr38oic">Anishinaabe teen Autumn Peltier</a>. But they have also faced skepticism and hostility. Some members of older generations have looked upon these events through jaundiced eyes and questioned their credibility. </p>
<h2>The role of social networks</h2>
<p>Canadian member of Parliament, former cabinet minister and leader of the People’s Party, <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/5846043/maxime-bernier-greta-thunberg-mentally-unstable/">Maxime Bernier, called Thunberg “mentally unstable</a>.” Bernier, and others, claim that youth like Thunberg are being manipulated, a sentiment echoed by Fox News. <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1176339522113679360">Thunberg was also subtly mocked on Twitter by the President of the United States</a>.</p>
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<p>What is the significance of youth climate activism? Are Thunberg and other youth just being manipulated by adults? From a sociological point of view, there are a variety of intriguing aspects to this mass mobilization.</p>
<p>While I am not sure manipulated is the right word, in some cases climate strike participants are influenced by others. Youth leaders actively mobilize other youth at high schools and universities. In some cases youth also consult and interact with adults such as parents, teachers and activists.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199678402.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780199678402-e-34">Having social network ties</a> and receiving encouragement to participate, is consistently one of the strongest predictors of who gets involved in mass mobilization, no matter how old participants are. Some <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1755-618X.2002.tb00628.x">youth are influenced by others to get involved in protests, but the same is true for adults.</a></p>
<h2>Climate justice</h2>
<p><a href="https://bit.ly/2ls8kgK">One lens through which to consider these issues is climate justice</a>. </p>
<p>The idea is that those who have contributed the most carbon emissions and benefited the most from them tend to be less affected by the negative consequences of global warming. Those who have contributed less to the problem are typically disproportionately affected. Some dimensions of climate justice involve social class, global North-South citizenship, Indigeneity, race, gender and age cohort.</p>
<p>With regard to intergenerational equity, youth have contributed far less to emissions but <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/S0921-8009(02)00026-5">during their lives they will be far more affected by climate change</a>. Significantly, in recent decades, in Western countries at least, there are many more courses and programs on environmental topics available in the education system than there were 50 years ago. </p>
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<p>When thinking about whether the youth participating in these mass mobilizations are being “manipulated,” it is useful to consider the fact that they have a higher stake in tackling climate change than older adults because they are fighting for their future, and on average, they are better educated on these issues. </p>
<p>Nevertheless, there are several apparent puzzles concerning youth involvement in politics and activism. For example, voting-age youth <a href="https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-soc-071811-145439">typically have lower voting rates</a> and some research has shown that, demographically, lower numbers of youth are members of established environmental movement organizations. </p>
<p>At the same time, youth who are involved in the environmental movement tend to be relatively more engaged. For example, my research in Canada has shown that age is inversely related to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/716100620">environmentally friendly behaviour</a> (such as taking alternative forms of transportation or reducing waste), <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1755-618X.2002.tb00628.x">environmental activism</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2597">having a plan to deal with climate change</a>. </p>
<p>This is due to socialization related to environmental education, current events and information campaigns led by social movements. Youth engagement in activism is also partly a function of “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-polisci-052615-025801">biographical availability</a>” — being more flexible in terms of schedules and less susceptible to sanctions, such as being fired from a job.</p>
<h2>Questioning business as usual</h2>
<p>One answer for why are some people reacting against the recent waves of youth climate activism might be found from the insights of Bob Inglis. The former Republican, who had <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/feb/14/bob-inglis-republican-believes-climate-change">long been a climate denier</a>, reversed his stance on climate change in 2010. His decision to come out as a believer in human-caused climate change may have cost him his seat in Congress.</p>
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<p>During an interview in the 2014 documentary <em><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3675568/">Merchants of Doubt</a></em>, Inglis observed that if the scientists are right about climate change, then you are forced to question your whole way of life. This is a hard conclusion to accept, and it is easier psychologically to attack the messengers. </p>
<p>This could be one reason why people like Bernier are savagely attacking Thunberg and other youth. On the other hand, one of the reasons why youth climate activists are able to take on the role of messenger is that they are not nearly as tied to the status quo as older age cohorts.</p>
<p>As sociologist Doug McAdam has noted, if there is hope that social movements will play a significant role solving the climate crisis, it lies with the actions of the world’s youth.</p>
<p>[ <em>Like what you’ve read? Want more?</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/ca/newsletters?utm_source=TCCA&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=likethis">Sign up for The Conversation’s daily newsletter</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/124220/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Tindall receives research funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. This is an agency that provides funding for academic research. The funding is for research expenses, not the salary of the author. David Tindall has a volunteer affiliation with the Climate Reality Project Canada, for whom he periodically gives educational presentations to public audiences on climate change.</span></em></p>The world has witnessed millions of youth demonstrating across the globe about the need for climate action.David Tindall, Professor of Sociology, University of British ColumbiaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1241532019-09-25T22:14:46Z2019-09-25T22:14:46ZAfter Greta Thunberg’s UN address, an ethicist weighs in on our moral failure to act on climate change<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/293906/original/file-20190924-51425-14t9g3a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=101%2C95%2C4123%2C2628&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Swedish teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg speaks as she takes part during the Climate Strike in New York. Tens of thousands of protesters joined rallies on Sept. 20 as a day of worldwide demonstrations calling for action against climate change. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Eduardo Munoz Alvarez)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In her address to the United Nations, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2019/09/23/countries-promise-more-aggressive-action-un-climate-summit-is-it-enough/">Greta Thunberg charged adults with unforgivable moral failure</a>. By failing to enact real change that will reverse global warming trends, grown-ups, she said, have “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/video/2019/sep/23/greta-thunberg-to-world-leaders-how-dare-you-you-have-stolen-my-dreams-and-my-childhood-video">stolen my dreams and childhood</a>.”</p>
<p>With this accusation still ringing in our ears, many of us, and maybe parents especially, are asking: who is actually morally responsible for averting catastrophic climate change? </p>
<p>The message from the striking school children is: we all do. In ethical terms, theirs is a forward-looking account of moral responsibility, not a backward-looking one. What matters most, they say, is not that leaders communicate their concern about global warming or apologize for past and present fossil-fuel-intensive policies. </p>
<p>Instead, what matters is that concerted actions be taken now to dramatically reduce carbon emissions from fossil fuels and to chart the path forward to a net zero-emission future. It is our shared political responsibility, they say, to urgently demand the policy changes needed to slow the rate of global warming and protect the planet’s ecosystems.</p>
<h2>A moral responsibility</h2>
<p>This call to collective moral and political responsibility is exactly right. As individuals, we can all be held accountable for helping to stop the undeniable environmental harms around us and the catastrophic threat posed by rising levels of CO2 and other greenhouse gases. Those of us with a degree of privilege and influence have an even greater responsibility to assist and advocate on behalf of those most vulnerable to the effects of global warming. </p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/dont-bet-on-the-un-to-fix-climate-change-its-failed-for-30-years-123308">Don't bet on the UN to fix climate change – it's failed for 30 years</a>
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<p>This group includes children everywhere whose futures are uncertain at best, <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/new-yorks-climate-strike-and-the-things-that-make-teen-agers-march">terrifying at worst</a>. It also includes those who are already suffering from severe weather events and rising water levels caused by global warming, and communities dispossessed by fossil fuel extraction. Indigenous peoples around the globe whose lands and water systems are being confiscated and polluted in the search for ever more sources of oil, gas and coal are owed our support and assistance. So are marginalized communities displaced by mountaintop removal and destructive dam energy projects, climate refugees and many others.</p>
<p>The message of climate activists is that we can’t fulfil our responsibilities simply by making green choices as consumers or expressing support for their cause. The late American political philosopher <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iris_Marion_Young">Iris Young</a> thought that we could only discharge our “<a href="https://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195392388.001.0001/acprof-9780195392388">political responsibility for injustice</a>,” as she put it, through collective political action. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/canadas-liberals-make-it-hard-for-green-voters-to-love-them-122935">Canada's Liberals make it hard for green voters to love them</a>
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<p>The interests of the powerful, she warned, conflict with the political responsibility to take actions that challenge the status quo — but which are necessary to reverse injustices.</p>
<p>As the striking school children and older climate activists everywhere have repeatedly pointed out, <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-liberals-pledge-to-commit-canada-to-net-zero-carbon-emissions-by-2050/">political leaders have so far failed to enact the carbon emissions reduction policies</a> that are so desperately needed. Despite UN Secretary General António Guterres’ sombre words of warning at the Climate Action Summit, <a href="https://theconversation.com/dont-bet-on-the-un-to-fix-climate-change-its-failed-for-30-years-123308">the UN is largely powerless</a> in the face of governments that refuse to enact meaningful carbon-reducing policies, such as China and the U.S. </p>
<p>Like social movements before them, the striking school children recognize that our leaders cannot be relied upon to change unsustainable policies in the key sectors of energy, transportation and housing. Only massive public pressure can cause them to do so — and this requires collective political action of the kind we’ve seen during the <a href="https://350.org/about/">week of global protests</a>.</p>
<h2>Too little, too late?</h2>
<p>The oil, gas and coal lobbies are powerful opponents that have the ear of politicians in the top polluting countries. Canada, which ranks as the world’s sixth largest energy consumer, is no exception. While the Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act passed in 2018 follows the fee-and-dividend approach that climate change scientists and economists have called for, its future is precarious — <a href="https://fairpathforward.ca/canadas-plan-2/">especially in this election year</a>. </p>
<p>And it may be too little too late. Canada’s emissions in 2018 were seven per cent higher than in 1997, the year in which we signed the Kyoto Protocol. It will take aggressive action to reach net zero <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/23/opinion/climate-change-fossil-fuels.html">greenhouse gas emissions by 2050</a> at the latest — the goal that climate change scientists say we must achieve.</p>
<p>The massive turnout for climate action demonstrations around the world may not be in vain. The federal Liberals have announced <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/5943543/canada-net-zero-emissions-2050/">they will commit to the 2050 net zero-emissions target if they are re-elected.</a> </p>
<p>But meeting this target will require a dramatic reduction in our reliance on fossil fuels and accelerated investment in alternative, clean energy sources and infrastructure. This would most certainly require <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/on-monday-canada-declared-a-climate-emergency-on-tuesday-it-approved-a-pipeline-expansion/2019/06/18/242faca6-9137-11e9-956a-88c291ab5c38_story.html">reversing plans for a Trans Mountain Pipeline</a>, for starters. Given the formidable opponents — the oil, gas and coal industries — the kids are right that we all need to step up to our collective political responsibility if we are to achieve what’s needed to stop climate change.</p>
<p>[ <em>You’re smart and curious about the world. So are The Conversation’s authors and editors.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/ca/newsletters?utm_source=TCCA&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=youresmart">You can read us daily by subscribing to our newsletter</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/124153/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Monique Deveaux receives funding from the Canada Research Chairs program.</span></em></p>The kids are right when it comes to climate change, says an ethicist: adults have a moral and ethical responsibility to take the necessary actions to stop climate change.Monique Deveaux, Professor of Philosophy and Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Ethics & Global Social Change, University of GuelphLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1237042019-09-19T14:46:49Z2019-09-19T14:46:49ZClimate change: children are carving out a place in politics – now adults must listen and act<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/293230/original/file-20190919-22441-10cbh26.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=21%2C155%2C4695%2C2991&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/15th-march-2019-london-uk-thousands-1339618181?src=0IdwWd82Q9O8GwFiArjxfw-1-7">Andrius Kaziliunas/Shutterstock.</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>There’s no doubt that young people today are driving action on climate change. The <a href="https://www.fridaysforfuture.org/">#FridaysforFuture</a> school strikes are arguably the most dedicated and sustained direct action in a generation. School pupils have kicked off an international movement committed to addressing the injustices, mass extinctions and environmental damage caused by climate change – while also building global networks, speaking out in public and holding the adults around them to account. </p>
<p>As more adults and institutions <a href="https://www.campaigncc.org/climate_strike_20_september">join the protests</a>, it seems the agency of these young people is finally being recognised. But conversations about climate change still appeal to authorities for answers – whether calling for politicians to act, or for people to listen to scientists. </p>
<p>Of course, listening to experts and holding politicians to account is an important part of what climate activists need to achieve. But it’s not the only part. As the schools strikes continue to gain momentum, it’s time to think about how young people can be meaningfully involved in shaping the future of our planet. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, there are still significant barriers preventing children from making their voices heard in democratic societies – not least the way they are represented in the media. As academics interested in children in politics and culture, we’re exploring these issues as part of a project called <a href="https://www2.mmu.ac.uk/artshumanities/rah/news/story/?id=10645">Europe and the Child - Crisis, Activism, Culture</a>. So far, we’ve found that cultural images of children involved in activism reveal adult desires and anxieties, rather than providing real empowerment. </p>
<h2>Are you listening?</h2>
<p>Swedish activist Greta Thunberg captured the world’s attention when she was invited to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFkQSGyeCWg">address world leaders</a> at the UN conference on climate change in December 2018, at just 15 years of age. Since then, her school strikes have become a global phenomenon. Through international media coverage and meetings with high-profile political figures, Thunberg has brought the climate emergency into view, right at the heart of political power in the West. </p>
<p>Thunberg has explained that her actions were inspired by by the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/feb/11/parkland-student-activists-march-for-our-lives-year-later-2019">Parkland students’ protests against gun violence</a>, while the school strike model builds on the walkouts and sit-ins <a href="http://www.ushistory.org/us/54d.asp">by African-American students</a> during the civil rights era. </p>
<p>Thunberg is not the first young person to address the UN climate conference. <a href="https://www.kathyjetnilkijiner.com/author-bio/">Kathy Jenil-Kijiner</a>, a Marshall Islands poet and activist, has called for urgent action as rising sea levels threaten her home, as has <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/apr/01/yeb-sano-typhoon-haiyan-un-climate-talks">young diplomat Yeb Sano</a> from the Philippines. Global climate injustice cannot be fully understood without listening to, and empowering, young people from around the world. </p>
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<span class="caption">Thunberg at a school strike in Washington, DC.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/washington-dc-usa-september-13-2019-1506895724?src=oEuoV4eoZnL0HaErtGOLRw-1-0">Aschwaphoto/Shutterstock.</a></span>
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<p>Thunberg’s role as spokesperson for the younger generation is fraught with difficulties. As a child herself, Thunberg has insisted that the blame for the current climate emergency – and the responsibility for fixing it –lies with older generations. Yet adults and establishment figures have repeatedly sought to position her either as a prophet and a child saviour, or as a naive puppet of interested parties. </p>
<p>For example, writer and activist Naomi Klein <a href="https://truthout.org/video/naomi-klein-greta-thunberg-is-a-prophetic-voice-in-fight-for-climate-justice/">praised Thunberg for her moral clarity</a>, arguing that she is one of the youth voices that has “burst through the bureaucratic language with which we shield ourselves from the reality of the stakes, the extraordinary stakes of our moment in history”, and that young people have <a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/oureconomy/naomi-klein-moral-crisis-inextricable-ecological-crisis/">found a sense of agency</a> in Thunberg’s school strikes, and her insistence that no one is too small to make a difference. </p>
<p>Conversely, Thunberg has also been subjected to a series of attacks from <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/aug/15/arron-banks-jokes-about-greta-thunberg-and-freak-yachting-accidents">right-wing establishment figures</a> and climate deniers, doubting her sincerity and ridiculing her appearance and her way of speaking, with reference to <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-08-02/thunberg-hits-back-after-being-called-deeply-disturbed/11376724">her Asperger’s diagnosis</a>. Some of those criticisms have also been levelled at the school strikes movement, with <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-49291464">politicians calling</a> young participants “truants” and “puppets”. </p>
<h2>A story of empowerment</h2>
<p>Beyond the media coverage, there has also been a surge in fiction and non-fiction books published about the climate crisis for young people. Some publishers have called this <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/aug/11/greta-thunberg-leads-to-boom-in-books-aimed-at-empowering-children-to-save-planet">“the Greta effect”</a>, though the environment has been a concern in children’s literature since at least the 1970s, exemplified by <a href="https://clpe.org.uk/corebooks/dinosaurs-and-all-rubbish">Dinosaurs and all that Rubbish</a> by Michael Foreman. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/childrens-books-can-do-more-to-inspire-the-new-generation-of-earth-warriors-97580">Children's books can do more to inspire the new generation of Earth warriors</a>
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<p>In contrast to that classic parable – which seeks to educate its readers – recent books including Lily Dyu’s <a href="https://nosycrow.com/product/earth-heroes/">Earth Heroes</a> and Martin Dorey’s <a href="http://www.walker.co.uk/Kids-Fight-Plastic-9781406390650.aspx">Kids Fight Plastic</a> present children as saviours of the planet. </p>
<p>It’s positive that books by adults <a href="https://theconversation.com/childrens-books-can-do-more-to-inspire-the-new-generation-of-earth-warriors-97580">are recognising</a> the agency of young people and seeking to empower them further. But this rhetoric also burdens young people with the responsibility for change, while political institutions afford them little power. </p>
<p>It’s not enough to put children on the covers of newspapers and call them “heroes”. It’s not even enough to listen to the concerns they’re raising through the global strikes for climate action. Adults in positions of authority need to give young people the means to change the world and create their own visions for the future. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/290123/original/file-20190829-106524-1w6rzla.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/290123/original/file-20190829-106524-1w6rzla.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290123/original/file-20190829-106524-1w6rzla.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290123/original/file-20190829-106524-1w6rzla.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290123/original/file-20190829-106524-1w6rzla.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=560&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290123/original/file-20190829-106524-1w6rzla.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=560&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290123/original/file-20190829-106524-1w6rzla.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=560&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><strong><em>This article is part of <a href="https://www.cjr.org/covering_climate_now/covering-climate-partnerships.php/">The Covering Climate Now</a> series</em></strong>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>From media coverage to story books, children are consistently represented as prophets or puppets in the midst of climate emergency. It’s time for that to change.Eleanor Byrne, Senior Lecturer in English, Manchester Metropolitan UniversityBenjamin Bowman, Lecturer, Manchester Metropolitan UniversityChloe Germaine Buckley, Senior Lecturer in English, Manchester Metropolitan UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1237462019-09-18T22:16:49Z2019-09-18T22:16:49ZYouth climate movement puts ethics at the center of the global debate<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/293007/original/file-20190918-187991-vuqctn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Young environmentalists are putting the ethical dimensions of climate change at the center of a global debate that has historically focused on politics, efficiency and cost-benefits analysis.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Hong-Kong-Climate-Student-Protests/ab34783ffcc342c5a4566e5ac6770b29/143/0">AP Photo/Kin Cheung</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Even if you’ve never heard of Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old Swedish environmentalist who <a href="https://www.npr.org/2019/08/28/754818342/teen-climate-activist-greta-thunberg-arrives-in-new-york-after-sailing-the-atlan">crossed the Atlantic on a sailboat</a> to attend a Sept. 23 <a href="https://www.un.org/en/climatechange/">United Nations summit on the climate</a>, you may have seen the student-led <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/20/climate/global-climate-strike.html">Global Climate Strike</a> she helped inspire on Friday, Sept. 20. </p>
<p>People in all 50 U.S. states and more than 150 countries, from Germany to Australia, took to the streets to “to <a href="https://globalclimatestrike.net/#faq">declare a climate emergency</a>” the organizers said, and show politicians what “action in line with climate science and justice means.” </p>
<p>The strike was galvanized by a global youth movement, whose <a href="https://www.fridaysforfuture.org/about;">Friday school walkouts</a> over the last year were themselves inspired by Thunberg’s own three-week strike in August 2018 to demand climate action by the Swedish parliament. </p>
<p>People of all ages joined the global protest, though adults – with their environmental organizations, climate negotiations and election campaigns – took <a href="https://www.vox.com/2019/9/17/20864740/greta-thunberg-youth-climate-strike-fridays-future">a little longer to get on board</a>. The Union of Concerned Scientists published an “<a href="https://blog.ucsusa.org/erika-spanger-siegfried/what-is-the-climate-strike-an-adults-guide">Adult’s Guide</a>” to the climate strike to help parents of participants get up to speed. </p>
<p>But the kids are clearly leading on climate change – and they’re changing the way we talk about this global challenge, putting ethics at the center of the debate.</p>
<h2>Climate change is an ethical problem</h2>
<p>Economic assessments of climate change, such as cost-benefit analysis, have for years helped justify political procrastination. By <a href="https://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1577&context=ylpr">discounting</a> the importance of anticipated harms to people in the future, policymakers can argue that taking actions to address climate change today are too costly.</p>
<p>Short-term thinking by today’s “grown-ups” ignores her generation, Thunberg <a href="https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=730383662">says</a>. </p>
<p>“When you think about the future today, you don’t think beyond the year 2050,” she said in a <a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/greta_thunberg_the_disarming_case_to_act_right_now_on_climate?language=en">2018 TED talk</a>. “What we do or don’t do right now will affect my entire life and the lives of my children and grandchildren.”</p>
<p>Youth climate activists argue that “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jan/25/our-house-is-on-fire-greta-thunberg16-urges-leaders-to-act-on-climate">our house is on fire</a>” and insist that world leaders act accordingly. They are attuned to the ecological consequences, intergenerational implications and international unfairness of climate change for all people living today. </p>
<p>Scholars in my field of environmental ethics have been <a href="https://as.nyu.edu/content/dam/nyu-as/faculty/documents/ethics_pub_policy.pdf">writing about climate justice</a> for decades. The arguments vary, but a key conclusion is that the burdens of responding to climate change should be divided equitably – not borne primarily by the poor.</p>
<p>This notion of “common, but differentiated responsibilities” is a fundamental principle of equity outlined in the 1992 <a href="https://unfccc.int/resource/docs/convkp/conveng.pdf">United Nations climate change treaty</a>, which laid the groundwork for the many international climate negotiations that have occurred since. </p>
<p>Philosophers like <a href="https://www.merton.ox.ac.uk/people/professor-henry-shue">Henry Shue</a> have laid out the reasons that wealthy countries like the United States are morally bound not just to significantly cut their own carbon emissions but also <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/climate-justice-9780198778745?lang=en&cc=us#">help other countries adapt to a changing climate</a>. That includes contributing financially to the development of climate-friendly energy sources that meet the pressing and near-term basic needs of developing countries. </p>
<p>Historically, <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/246327954_Global_Environment_and_International_Inequality">wealthy countries</a> have contributed the most and benefited the most from fossil fuel emissions. These same countries have the greatest financial, technological and institutional capacity to shift away from fossil fuels. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, poor countries are often <a href="https://www.international.gc.ca/world-monde/issues_development-enjeux_developpement/environmental_protection-protection_environnement/climate-climatiques.aspx?lang=eng">most vulnerable</a> to climate impacts like <a href="https://theconversation.com/can-we-save-low-lying-island-nations-from-rising-seas-80232">rising seas</a>, more intense storms and eroding coastlines. </p>
<p>For these reasons, many environmental ethicists hold, wealthy high-emitting countries should lead the way on mitigation and finance international climate adaption. Some even argue that rich countries should <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21550085.2017.1342965">compensate affected countries for the climate loss and damage</a>.</p>
<h2>Practical, not ethical</h2>
<p>Political leaders tend to dodge questions of ethics in their policymaking and global debates on climate change. </p>
<p>According to Stephen Gardiner, a philosopher at University of Washington, climate policy often <a href="https://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199996476.001.0001/acprof-9780199996476">focuses on “practical” considerations</a> like efficiency or political feasibility. </p>
<p>U.S. climate negotiators in particular <a href="https://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199337668.001.0001/acprof-9780199337668-chapter-2">have for decades pushed back</a> against ethically grounded differentiated responsibilities and resisted top down mandatory emissions cuts, seeking a more politically palatable option: <a href="https://unfccc.int/process-and-meetings/the-paris-agreement/nationally-determined-contributions-ndcs">Voluntary emissions cuts</a> determined by each country.</p>
<p>And some legal scholars say a climate policy based not on ethics but on <a href="https://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199996476.001.0001/acprof-9780199996476-chapter-6">self-interest</a> might be more effective.</p>
<p>University of Chicago law professors Eric Posner and David Weisbach have gone so far as to suggest, on efficiency grounds, that <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/titles/9130.html">developing nations should pay wealthy countries to emit less</a>, since poorer and more vulnerable nations have more to lose as a result of the climate crisis.</p>
<h2>The kids aren’t buying it</h2>
<p>Young activists like Greta Thunberg are reversing the marginalization of ethics from climate conversations. </p>
<p>With their focus on challenging “<a href="https://www.teenvogue.com/story/5-youth-led-climate-justice-groups-to-save-the-environment">systematic power and inequity</a>” and <a href="https://www.teenvogue.com/story/5-youth-led-climate-justice-groups-to-save-the-environment">respect and reciprocity</a>, they recognize that virtually all decisions about how to respond to climate change are value judgments. </p>
<p>That includes inaction. The status quo – a fossil fuel-dominated energy economy – is making the <a href="https://theconversation.com/global-inequality-is-25-higher-than-it-would-have-been-in-a-climate-stable-world-115937">rich richer and the poor poorer</a>. Sticking with business as usual, the argument goes, places more importance on near-term benefits enjoyed by some than on the longer-term consequences many will suffer.</p>
<p>Polls show <a href="https://beta.washingtonpost.com/science/most-american-teens-are-frightened-by-climate-change-poll-finds-and-about-1-in-4-are-taking-action/2019/09/15/1936da1c-d639-11e9-9610-fb56c5522e1c_story.html?wpisrc=nl_most&wpmm=1">the youth are concerned and engaged</a>. Youth activists are explicitly calling attention to the harm climate change is causing now and the harm it threatens for the future – and demanding action. And they are working internationally, in a global movement of solidarity.</p>
<p>Scholarship on climate ethics is robust, but it has had <a href="https://ethicsandclimate.org/2019/08/12/unesco-examines-the-urgency-of-and-strategy-for-getting-traction-for-ethical-guidance-in-climate-change-policy-formation-at-bangkok-program/">limited effects on actual policy</a>. Young people, on the other hand, are communicating the ethical issues clearly and loudly. </p>
<p>In doing so, they are demanding accountability from adults. They are asking us to consider what our resistance to change means for the world they will inherit. </p>
<p>So when my high school-aged daughter pulled a wrinkled climate strike flier out of her backpack recently, asking, “Can I skip school and go?” </p>
<p>I asked myself, “What am I saying if I say no?” </p>
<p>[ <em>Like what you’ve read? Want more?</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=likethis">Sign up for The Conversation’s daily newsletter</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/123746/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Marion Hourdequin serves on a National Academies of Sciences study committee that studies climate intervention strategies that reflect sunlight to cool Earth. The views expressed in this article are her own.</span></em></p>Economic and political assessments of climate change have for years helped justify inaction. Now, young environmentalists worldwide are shifting the debate to focus on values, ethics and justice.Marion Hourdequin, Professor of Philosophy, Colorado CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1156942019-09-15T12:20:03Z2019-09-15T12:20:03Z#Fridaysforfuture: When youth push the environmental movement towards climate justice<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/292291/original/file-20190912-190031-eobe9r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Climate activist Greta Thunberg, centre left, joins a coalition of youth climate leaders and environmental groups during a climate strike outside the United Nations, Aug. 30, 2019, in New York. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In a time of <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/">climate catastrophe</a>, after record-breaking temperatures scorched many parts of the world this summer and a devastating hurricane recently battered the Bahamas, school climate strikes are back. </p>
<p>A week of <a href="https://globalclimatestrike.net/">student-led global days of action is planned between Sept. 20 and 27</a>. Young people skipping school to protest climate inaction in <a href="https://www.fridaysforfuture.org/">#Fridaysforfuture protests</a> began last August when Greta Thunberg, now 16, sat outside the Swedish parliament for three weeks. Following her lead, young people have been walking out of school — some of them calling for “<a href="https://theconversation.com/climate-strikes-greta-thunberg-calls-for-system-change-not-climate-change-heres-what-that-could-look-like-112891">system change, not climate change</a>.” </p>
<p>For those of us who have been analyzing climate activism, this is an important move toward a politicized generation that understands climate change is the greatest threat to our collective future. </p>
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<h2>Youth climate activists and academics</h2>
<p>Our activist research collaborative, the RadLab based at the University of Manitoba, is made up of both youth climate activists and academics. </p>
<p>We have worked together over the last five years to look at the learning in activism and analyze how young climate activists become politicized. We’ve studied the historic socio-cultural roots of the North American environmental movement, <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/vanity-fair-the-unbearabl_b_48766">their ongoing legacy</a> and lived experiences in today’s environmental activism.</p>
<p>We have found that high-profile mainstream environmental movements in the United States and Canada tend to see themselves as virtuous while not acknowledging that <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/ca/academic/subjects/history/regional-history-after-1500/green-imperialism-colonial-expansion-tropical-island-edens-and-origins-environmentalism-16001860?format=PB&isbn=9780521565134">environmentalism grew out of racialized imperialist and colonial strategies of land expansion</a> and protection. </p>
<p>For example, <a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/conservation-refugees">conservationism has been interconnected with alienating lands from Indigenous people</a>. Indigenous communities and poor people have been removed, relocated and displaced to <a href="https://www.ubcpress.ca/rethinking-the-great-white-north">protect privileged leisure access to “nature,” or white settler economic interests</a>. </p>
<p>High-profile mainstream environmental movements in Canada and the U.S. <a href="https://doi.org/10.3167/ares.2018.090110">have often inadequately addressed or acknowledged this colonial and racialized history and analysis</a>. They have often ignored environmental damage in Black communities, communities of colour and Indigenous communities. Black activists and activists of colour working in their communities <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0002764200043004003">have called their work environmental justice</a>. Indigenous communities’ work related to environmentalism has been rooted in <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/600136/our-history-is-the-future-by-nick-estes/9781786636720/">sovereignty advocacy</a>; they have centred their relationships with lands, water and life that is “<a href="https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/being-together-in-place">more than human</a>.” </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/292296/original/file-20190912-190065-1r49ozg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/292296/original/file-20190912-190065-1r49ozg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/292296/original/file-20190912-190065-1r49ozg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/292296/original/file-20190912-190065-1r49ozg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/292296/original/file-20190912-190065-1r49ozg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/292296/original/file-20190912-190065-1r49ozg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/292296/original/file-20190912-190065-1r49ozg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Toronto climate strike, March 2019.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Milan Ilnyckyj/Flickr)</span></span>
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<p>Our research suggests climate activists involved in mainstream environmental movements are <a href="https://publisher.abc-clio.com/9781440842139/">learning from broader environmental justice and Indigenous sovereignty movements</a> and that some today are <a href="http://joecurnow.com/Curnow%20&%20Gross%202017.pdf">adopting this broader climate justice analysis</a>.</p>
<p>They also don’t believe that people in power are looking out for their best interests and they are demonstrating that young people must have a hand in shaping the future.</p>
<h2>Moving toward systemic approaches</h2>
<p>University students have been <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13549839.2015.1009825">organizing to demand that their schools divest from fossil fuel companies</a>. </p>
<p>We researched the shifts some activists involved with University of Toronto’s fossil fuel divestment group (Fossil Free UofT) experienced when they <a href="https://doi.org/10.3102/0002831218804496">moved toward more systemic approaches to addressing climate change</a>. A few of those activists became the members of the RadLab Collective through this participatory action research project. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/292281/original/file-20190912-190026-15rt4un.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/292281/original/file-20190912-190026-15rt4un.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/292281/original/file-20190912-190026-15rt4un.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/292281/original/file-20190912-190026-15rt4un.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/292281/original/file-20190912-190026-15rt4un.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/292281/original/file-20190912-190026-15rt4un.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/292281/original/file-20190912-190026-15rt4un.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Fossil Free University of Toronto activists at the March for Jobs, Justice and the Climate in July 2014.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Andrew Kohan)</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
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<p>In the three years since the <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/university-toronto-fossil-fuels-1.3512891">University of Toronto’s president rejected divestment</a>, we have worked together to analyze the learning made possible through our environmental activism. </p>
<p>In our research process, we collected video of every meeting, rally and action that was part of the divestment campaign for two years and analyzed it. We found that the learning students experienced helped them to shift how they understood themselves so that they embraced an identity as environmentalists committed to climate justice. </p>
<p>Learning wasn’t just about ideas or new concepts in participants’ minds — it was about how they learned to participate and communicate together so that the space of planning, organizing and actions could become more equitable. </p>
<p>They began to engage in ways that reflected their emerging understanding that objectivity is a Euro-Western construct. They embraced the reality they were discovering: that knowledge could emerge through relationships and experiences. Such ideas are shared <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Black-Feminist-Thought-Knowledge-Consciousness-and-the-Politics-of-Empowerment/Hill-Collins/p/book/9780415964722">by feminist</a> and <a href="https://search.informit.com.au/documentSummary;dn=413800432915271;res=IELIND">Indigenous philosophies</a>. </p>
<h2>Learning scaled up</h2>
<p>We charted how divestment activists moved from thinking of environmentalism narrowly, to thinking about it in its historic relationship to colonialism, racialization and capitalism. This thinking shifted what they believed was required of them as activists and who they felt accountable to.</p>
<p>Through research data analysis and informal conversation, group members <a href="http://www.environmentandsociety.org/perspectives/2017/4/article/taking-space-men-masculinity-and-student-climate-movement">identified the patterned practices of exclusion, which our research group analyzed</a>. In our group, Black and Indigenous group members and members of colour initially had fewer opportunities for leadership and had their ideas affirmed by anyone in the group far less frequently. As members noticed and named this, they became politicized and worked to shift the dynamics.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/292282/original/file-20190912-190065-1ircq6x.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/292282/original/file-20190912-190065-1ircq6x.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/292282/original/file-20190912-190065-1ircq6x.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/292282/original/file-20190912-190065-1ircq6x.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/292282/original/file-20190912-190065-1ircq6x.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/292282/original/file-20190912-190065-1ircq6x.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/292282/original/file-20190912-190065-1ircq6x.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Fossil Free University of Toronto activists at the March for Jobs, Justice and the Climate in July 2014.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Andrew Kohan)</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Through the process of naming racialized and gendered patterns in the group, the politics of the group shifted. Black and Indigenous group members and members of colour shared their experiences of racialization in an informal people-of-colour caucus, and later in the equity committee they established. </p>
<p>A similar process emerged around gender in the group. As women and non-binary people shared their experiences of being left out of discussions and decision-making, they identified the pattern, and worked together to change the group’s processes. </p>
<p>From these alternative spaces, group members became politicized and amplified each other’s voices. They changed their collective practices and ways of knowing so that their analysis came to shape the group’s overall lens more and more. And these changes shifted how members identified — they came to see themselves as “radicals.” </p>
<p>The learning that happened around race and gender in the group scaled up, so that they understood anti-colonial, racial and gender justice as important at all levels of the campaign. </p>
<p>This changed some of the demands of the group, as they moved to include <a href="https://www.un.org/development/desa/indigenouspeoples/publications/2016/10/free-prior-and-informed-consent-an-indigenous-peoples-right-and-a-good-practice-for-local-communities-fao/">Indigenous solidarity language around Free, Prior and Informed Consent</a>
<a href="http://www.uoftfacultydivest.com/files/fossil-fuel-divest.pdf">in their analysis</a>.</p>
<p>They also <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03626784.2018.1468211">examined the limitations and problems with land acknowledgements</a>, and they and advocated for other anti-colonial campaigns on campus and <a href="https://www.ubcpress.ca/everyday-exposure">across Canada</a>, like work in <a href="https://www.facebook.com/AamjiwnaangSarniaAgainstPipelines/">Aamjiwnaang First Nation</a> and <a href="http://unistoten.camp">Unist'ot'en</a>.</p>
<h2>Justice-centred policies</h2>
<p>Our research suggests that many of today’s young activists are less willing to accept normalized, racialized, colonial and patriarchal dynamics in their groups. This includes the <a href="http://vaipl.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/ExecutiveSummary-Diverse-Green.pdf">consequences of decades of predominantly white men’s leadership</a> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/08/white-men-environmental-movement-leadership">in environmental NGOs</a> or their universities and in state policies. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/292300/original/file-20190912-190016-14zzzho.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/292300/original/file-20190912-190016-14zzzho.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/292300/original/file-20190912-190016-14zzzho.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/292300/original/file-20190912-190016-14zzzho.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/292300/original/file-20190912-190016-14zzzho.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/292300/original/file-20190912-190016-14zzzho.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/292300/original/file-20190912-190016-14zzzho.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Toronto climate strike, March 2019.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Milan Ilnyckyj/Flickr)</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>Our research team is continuing to analyze data that will help us understand how environmentalists learn about solidarity and justice, grounded in an awareness of the contradictions and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/03626784.2018.1468211">limitations of solidarity</a>.</p>
<p>We want to learn in order to support people willing and able to fight for justice-centred policies that will stop the worst of the climate crisis for all communities. </p>
<p><em>Sinéad Dunphy co-wrote this article as part of the RadLab, an ongoing activist research collaborative based at the University of Manitoba.</em></p>
<p>[ <em>Like what you’ve read? Want more?</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/ca/newsletters?utm_source=TCCA&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=likethis">Sign up for The Conversation’s daily newsletter</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/115694/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joe Curnow received funding from the Vanier CGS for this research. </span></em></p>A research team of youth climate activists and academics is examining how environmentalists learn about solidarity and justice.Joe Curnow, Assistant Professor of Education, University of ManitobaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1175792019-06-03T21:13:39Z2019-06-03T21:13:39ZHow youth influenced the EU election – and could do the same in Canada<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276621/original/file-20190527-193540-17php9z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5649%2C3760&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A demonstrator holds a sign outside the Portuguese parliament in Lisbon during a climate strike of school students as part of the Fridays for Future movements on Friday, May 24, 2019. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source"> (AP Photo/Armando Franca)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>With major votes occurring within the span of five months this year, the European Union and Canadian federal elections are critical in deciding our planet’s future.</p>
<p>The results of the EU election — in which each European country elects an allotted number of representatives to the EU parliament — have already resulted in big changes, largely due to youth getting involved in politics.</p>
<p>Young people around the world are demonstrating a thorough understanding of the larger economic and environmental threats that are endangering not only individual freedom, but the very survival of our own species and more than <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/canada-biodiversity-1.5125108">a million others</a>.</p>
<p>Around the world, youth protest movements like #FridaysForFuture have been growing steadily. Student protesters recently turned out in <a href="https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2019/05/24/student-protesters-hope-bay-st-march-will-wake-up-government-and-corporations-to-climate-crisis.html">120 countries and 1,700 cities</a> to demand action on climate change just days before the EU elections on May 26. The next global student strike has already been announced for Sept. 20 and is expected to draw even bigger numbers.</p>
<p>It’s clear that young voters are bringing critical issues to the fore.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276617/original/file-20190527-193544-upar1i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276617/original/file-20190527-193544-upar1i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276617/original/file-20190527-193544-upar1i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276617/original/file-20190527-193544-upar1i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276617/original/file-20190527-193544-upar1i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276617/original/file-20190527-193544-upar1i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276617/original/file-20190527-193544-upar1i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Young people protest ahead of the European elections during a climate strike of school students as part of the Fridays for Future movement in front of the European Central Bank in Frankfurt, Germany.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Boris Roessler/dpa via AP)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As Europeans headed to the polls to elect a new European Parliament, the notion of a European “Green New Deal” was a big campaign issue. The German Green Party made history by coming in second place with <a href="https://www.bundeswahlleiter.de/info/presse/mitteilungen/europawahl-2019/35_19_vorlaeufiges-ergebnis.html">20.5 per cent thanks in part to the increased voter turnout in Germany (61.4 per cent)</a>.</p>
<p>The shift was due mostly to many first-time voters casting their ballots for the Greens, who won <a href="https://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2019-05/europawahlergebnis-klimapolitik-fridays-for-future-protestwahl-gruene">the highest support in the 18-to-24 cohort — 34 per cent — and 27 per cent in the 25-to-35 age group.</a>.</p>
<h2>European Green New Deal</h2>
<p>There was a renewed brawl pitting democratic eco-socialists and liberals against conservatives and far-right parties, as Europeans witnessed most strikingly in the <a href="https://www.thenewfederalist.eu/the-maastricht-debate-insight-into-candidates-for-european-commission">first debate</a> of the lead candidates of the pan-European parties.</p>
<p>The debate focused on “digital Europe,” “sustainable Europe” and the future of Europe. </p>
<p>The prospect of a European Green New Deal — popular among young voters — has been increasingly paired with renewed discussions about democratizing the European Union not just politically, but also economically. </p>
<p>Yanis Varoufakis’s transnational party <a href="https://europeanspring.net/">European Spring</a> included a Green New Deal in its platform, with the following pledges: <a href="https://diem25.org/manifesto-long/">“To dismantle the habitual domination of corporate power over the will of citizens; to re-politicize the rules that govern our single market and common currency.”</a> </p>
<p>The party only marginally missed the threshold for securing seats in Germany and Greece, <a href="https://diem25.org/green-new-deal-gathers-more-than-1-4-million-votes-across-europe/">but more than 1.4 millions Europeans</a> voted for a Green New Deal. In Spain, the Socialist Party (PSOE) won <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-green-new-deal-is-going-global-115961">on a Green New Deal platform</a>.</p>
<p>As World Economic Forum writer <a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/05/this-is-what-a-green-new-deal-for-europe-could-look-like/">Katie Whiting explained, a European Green New Deal would</a> invest “at least five per cent of Europe’s GDP in emissions-free transportation infrastructure, renewable energies and innovative technologies, while creating jobs and transitioning Europe to zero-emissions — all without raising taxes.” </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-green-new-deal-is-going-global-115961">The Green New Deal is going global</a>
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</em>
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<p>The European Greens, with <a href="http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/headlines/eu-affairs/20190523STO52402/elections-2019-highest-turnout-in-20-years">69 projected MEPs</a> in the European Parliament, will certainly need to respond to calls from the Left Bloc (38 seats) and the Socialists and Democrats (153 seats) to work together on making Europe environmentally green and socially just.</p>
<p>They’ll have to do so while dealing with MEPs from pan-European parties like Volt Europa who want to <a href="https://www.volteuropa.org/vision">democratize the European Union</a> as far-right parties like <a href="https://theconversation.com/far-right-groe-but-heres-what-they-all-have-in-common-101919">Alternative für Deutschland (AfD)</a> embrace increasingly nationalist and isolationist views.</p>
<p>The EU environmental agenda is also being shaped by particular national New Green debates. For example, in Germany, there is talk of reappropriating apartment units and car manufacturers to alleviate inequality and establish a <a href="http://www.taz.de/Debatte-Kevin-Kuehnert-zu-Enteignung/!5590059/">more sustainable Europe.</a> </p>
<h2>Nationalize BMW?</h2>
<p>Soon after discussions about nationalizing real estate properties emerged in the state of Berlin, Kevin Kühnert, the head of the 80,000-member-strong youth movement of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), was recently in the news for <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/05/02/german-politician-calls-bmw-put-collective-ownership/">public remarks</a> calling for the nationalization of corporations like BMW as well. </p>
<p>BMW is in the spotlight due to allegations it “breached EU antitrust rules from 2006 to 2014,” according to the <a href="http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-19-2008_en.htm">European Commission</a>. It’s being investigated for allegedly using illegal defeat devices to cheat regulatory emissions tests.</p>
<p>It’s not just young people making the case for abolishing private ownership of some entities. These daring remarks by young people, sometimes considered taboo, have inspired older generations too. As Germany celebrates the 70th anniversary of the Federal Republic and its German Basic Law, even Baby Boomers are reminding the public about the law’s Article 15 that allows the <a href="https://www.vorwaerts.de/artikel/enteignungen-steht-grundgesetz">nationalization of private property</a>. </p>
<p>Demands for action on climate change are growing louder every day. British parliament recently declared a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/may/01/declare-formal-climate-emergency-before-its-too-late-corbyn-warns">climate emergency</a> due in part to ongoing protests organized by the Extinction Rebellion movement, which has also been supported by #FridaysForFuture student activist <a href="https://twitter.com/GretaThunberg">Greta Thunberg</a>.</p>
<h2>Growing movement?</h2>
<p>The strong representation of Democratic Socialists federally in Germany, including young socialists up to the age of 35, is beginning to take hold across the Atlantic, where the Democratic Socialists of America, whose membership stands at 60,000, have also amassed more than 200,000 followers on <a href="https://twitter.com/DemSocialists?ref_src=twsrc%5Egogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor">Twitter</a>.</p>
<p>While Canada seems to be lagging behind when compared to the European youth activism, voter turnout for those aged 18-24 <a href="https://bdp.parl.ca/sites/PublicWebsite/default/en_CA/ResearchPublications/2016104E#a6">increased by 18 percentage points from the 2011 federal election to 57.1 per cent in 2015</a></p>
<p>And although provincial elections in Alberta and Prince Edward Island resulted in Progressive Conservative governments, the Green Party of P.E.I. are the first Greens in Canada to become the official opposition. </p>
<p>The progress is happening as many young Europeans and Canadians look up to young leaders like Germany’s Kühnert and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in the United States as they advocate Green New Deals. It’s time for young people in Canada to get more involved politically if they want to have a shot at saving the planet. For now, #FridaysForFuture may be a good way to start.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/117579/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tobias Wilczek receives funding for his doctoral research from the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).</span></em></p>It’s clear that young voters are bringing critical issues to the fore as they did in the recent EU elections. Will they do so in Canada too?Tobias Wilczek, University Instructor in German Studies, University of TorontoLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.