Where indeed is the government?
I find it agonising to imagine being in the minds of these kids. How awfully my generation has let them down. I and many of my compadres have fought for years to save them from the worst excesses of global heating and the climate chaos it causes. But we have been pretty ineffectual, and so many others seem to care little or nothing about their future.
Time to reset the societal rulebook, and let the younger generation have a huge say in that process, I think. The revolution is not going to be pretty. But it must be a revolution.
If you think that statement is too radical, consider the Financial Times as an example of our pivotal, pivoting, times. It now argues that free-enterprise capitalism is broken, in its current form, and needs a complete reset.
Thanks – and I was touched today by the same scenes in Bristol. The crowds were the biggest, and most good-natured, I have ever seen in Bristol. But those ‘children’ are angry, and are right to be. They are also afraid – and that is the hardest thing for us older ones to bear, for we have seen this coming for decades.
If the children cannot prod our politicians into urgent action, then what will? So we must all support their every effort. We cannot allow them to fail.
On BBC Radio4 this morning of 20th Sept’19 believe that Nick Gibb the Tory Education Minister said that the children should be in school !
What does that say about the Establishment’s mindset ? Trouble is that people hear so shallowly. He is saying that their masters have told them to continue heating the planet, possibly at an even greater rate, so that the masters can make even more money. Oh, and by the way, Nick we’ll give you some shekels!
NB The information which you sent out from an Establishment report re attaining a certain level of Solar Energy. They said the best possibility would be to gain that level by 2023 , but that is an impossibility. The middle option was to get there by the 2030’s and the worst was by the 2040’s+ – these two were possible.
AND your slide then told us that that level had been attained by 2013 !
Just been to look at York’s #GlobalClimateStrike. Lots of “System change not climate change” slogans. But what are the systems they want. I prefer something more specific.
Although enthused by the buzz, I also felt disappointed because we need to be more specific and …
Change to a system
… which bans cars
… with no flying
… that bans beef
… that taxes steel
… that plants trees
The admirable slogans in your video are similarly nonspecific. Along with the House of Commons Committee on Science and Technology, I can’t see a solution to the climate crisis without planning cars out of our lives.
There was a slogan in Foss Islands Road, York in the 1980s : “Cars kill the planet” with the help of IPCC reports (e.g. SR15) we can now work out that was true.
http://www.brusselsblog.co.uk/climate-change-and-town-planning/
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How can we not listen to the scientists, the children and the daily reported awful losses? Of forests, birds, marine life , pollution we can see in front of our eyes.
The children are right. They are facing tragedy of our making and how can a few men, Trump, Bolsonaro, Trudeau etc be allowed to do this? Americans, people of other countries, stand up for your children now. It is already too late for them to have the world we had.
Shame on those who do not act.
May I recommend: ‘Small is Beautiful’ by E.F. Schumacher – written in 1973!