The kids know what’s at risk. Only the essentials — water, soil, the atmosphere, sea levels and acidification, desertification, mass extinctions, food supply chains. Perhaps widening income inequality is making kids immune to the economic scaremongering arguments of their elders (what have they got to lose?) and more attentive to the facts: “The accumulation of carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases…is now trapping as much extra energy daily as 500,000 Hiroshima-class atomic bombs would release every 24 hours.” Now 415 ppm worth. Professional merchants of doubt are still hard at work derailing timely action while profiting off the status quo. Have you heard these hoary gems? That climate change activism is a Trojan horse filled with communists/socialists/globalists bent on world domination, or it’s already too late, or it’s about “greedy” scientists fighting for grant money, or the evidence is just not conclusive yet or ______________________________________________________.
projection by Ethan Turpin and Jonathan Smith
photo by MB Maher
No more excuses, no more alternate sets of facts. The information is out there and has been for decades, and the science is being borne out in real time, including every successive summer producing the hottest months on record. There’s no time left to convince the willfully ignorant or elect more environmental terrorists. It’s time to take to the streets and the voting booths and stand with the kids.
(have a great weekend!)
Well said. Time for the politicians and polluters and nay sayers to acknowledge change is needed ASAP.
I’m very proud of the kids who are assuming responsibility for driving this movement. With the exception of NPR, I thought news agencies gave the protests less time and attention than they deserved today but hopefully attention will continue to build leading up the the UN Climate Change Summit on Monday. I just tripped across a news item about a YouGov survey showing that the US has the largest percentage of climate change deniers (15%) among any of the nations surveyed – at risk of appropriating terminology from a thoroughly disreputable source, that’s SAD.
I have a couple FB friends I keep around just to be reminded how the other side thinks. They’re plant people, but very different ones. One of them wrote a long post last night that started with “Don’t believe the fear mongering. It is just a power grab” in reference to the marches. Then of course there were a long group of people agreeing with her.
Wish the kids were in control right now, hope they soon will be.
““greedy” scientists fighting for grant money”
that would be hilarious if the situation wasn’t so dire. If greed was your priority, you don’t become a scientist. You become an investment banker.