This past Friday, thousands of people across the world walked out of work and school to demand immediate action on climate change.
The protesting spanned all seven continents, with marches taking place in New York City, London, Paris, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Nairobi, Cape Town, Islamabad, Melbourne, Rio de Janeiro, and nearly every major city across the globe, as well as many smaller towns. A group of scientists in Antarctica rallied as well.
The march is part of a growing tide of climate activism, a movement mainly directed by young people.
Groups like the Extinction Rebellion and the Sunrise Movement, movements led primarily by youth, have been crucial to the movement’s success, helping support things like the Green New Deal and divestment from fossil fuel companies.
A key figure in Friday’s march was Greta Thunberg, a 16-year-old Swedish student and environmental activist.
Thunberg began striking by leaving school in August of 2018. Her influence has only grown since then, addressing the UN in 2018, the leaders of the EU in 2019, and the U.S. Congress in 2019.
On Monday, September 23, Thunberg again addressed the United Nations, saying “You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words. And yet I’m one of the lucky ones. People are suffering. People are dying.
Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction. And all you can talk about is money and fairytales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!”
Groups like the UN and the Union of Concerned Scientists have continued to release reports detailing the gravity of our planet’s situation.
According to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or the IPCC, humanity must stop not raise the global temperature by 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit by 2030 or face drastic consequences, including sea level rises that would drown coastal cities and low-lying islands, an increase in the ferocity and frequency of tropical storms, intense drought, and worldwide food shortages.
To avert this, there must be “rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society,” according to the panel.
In addition to rising temperatures, the natural world has suffered greatly in the past 150 years. Many scientists believe we are amidst the “Sixth Extinction,” the first mass extinction caused by humans. Approximately 40% of insect species are declining. Coral reefs are bleaching out and dying in the ocean due to rising temperature. Just last week, Cornell University published an article revealing that North America lost approximately 3 billion birds between 2019 and 1970.
The United States has seen President Donald Trump roll back many ecological protections recently, including the Clean Power Plan, which required utilities to decrease emissions by 32 percent from 2005 levels by 2030, the Bureau of Land Management’s Methane Rule, which sought to decrease methane emitted by oil drilling on federal lands, and altering the Endangered Species Act to include economic interests in determining whether or not species needed protection.
Trump has also started a legal battle over California’s right to set stricter emission standards for vehicles. These are part of efforts to make business easier for companies in the United States.
The Carbon Majors report revealed that only 100 companies are responsible for 71% of the world’s emissions.
It should be noted that the majority of regulations the United States Federal Government had in place would not have stopped the temperature rise in time to meet the UN’s date of 2030.
Students wishing to be involved with environmental issues on campus should go to DivestSLU, which meets on Mondays at 7:30 in the Student Center’s Monaco Room, and the Environmental Action Organization, which meets on Tuesdays at 7:00 in the Student Centers’s Crandell Room.