{"id":142243,"date":"2019-09-09T12:00:30","date_gmt":"2019-09-09T11:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=142243"},"modified":"2019-09-04T07:41:32","modified_gmt":"2019-09-04T06:41:32","slug":"the-rise-of-a-new-climate-activism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2019\/09\/the-rise-of-a-new-climate-activism\/","title":{"rendered":"The Rise of a New Climate Activism"},"content":{"rendered":"

Climate activism isn\u2019t new, but the last year has seen a resurgence in attention devoted to the subject.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Ecologist<\/p><\/div>\n

3 Sep 2019 – <\/em>I saw Greta Thunberg for the first time in Poland at the end of last year. It was during the early days of the Katowice\u00a0UNclimate negotiations. She was sitting in a makeshift\u00a0TV\u00a0studio, having her pigtails re-tied. I was in a hurry, chasing too many stories down at once, and paid little attention to this 15-year-old\u00a0girl.<\/p>\n

Of course,\u00a0I\u2019d heard of Greta by that point. I\u2019d received several emails inviting me to press conferences where she was speaking, but I hadn\u2019t taken the\u00a0bait.<\/p>\n

I had recently written about the Juliana v United States litigation, where a group of young people sued the government for failing to protect them against climate change, and profiled the Zero Hour campaign led by 16-year-old Seattleite Jamie Margolin. I assumed Greta was the next star of climate youth activism. What I didn\u2019t realise was that she would catalyse a shift in how climate activism works\u00a0altogether.<\/p>\n

Parliament<\/strong><\/p>\n

Climate activism isn\u2019t new, but the last year has seen a resurgence in attention devoted to the subject. For many campaigners, who have grown weary of watching their warnings fall on deaf ears, it has felt like hope has arrived at\u00a0last.<\/p>\n

Greta\u2019s rise to fame was\u00a0swift.<\/p>\n

Most people already know the story. She began striking outside the Swedish Parliament in August 2018, which garnered a certain amount of interest from journalists and fellow activists \u2013 in November, she gave a talk at TedxStockholm. But it was her explosive speech at the\u00a0UN\u00a0talks in Katowice that catapulted her into the\u00a0limelight.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have not come here to beg world leaders to care. You have ignored us in the past and you will ignore us again,\u201d she said. \u201cWe have run out of excuses and we are running out of time. We have come here to let you know that change is coming, whether you like it or not. The real power belongs to the\u00a0people.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the same time as Greta was standing outside Parliament by herself, then without the eyes of the world on her, another group was travelling around the\u00a0UK, testing the waters for another new movement. Between March and October 2018, they held around 60 discussions across the country. These events were called\u00a0Heading for Extinction<\/em>\u00a0\u2013 a kind of\u00a0#RoryWalks<\/a>(remember that?) of climate change. Then, on the last day of October, the group declared a\u00a0rebellion:<\/p>\n

History<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cHumanity finds itself embroiled in an event unprecedented in its history,\u201d reads the Declaration. \u201cWe, in alignment with our consciences and our reasoning, declare ourselves in rebellion against our Government and the corrupted, inept institutions that threaten our\u00a0future.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the following months, these two movements exploded into the mainstream. In April 2019, Extinction Rebellion forced London to a standstill with a ten day protest, with more than 1,100 people\u00a0arrested<\/a>. More than a million pupils\u00a0participated<\/a>in a Greta-inspired school strike in March, and many have continued to strike weekly as part of the #FridaysForFuture\u00a0movement.<\/p>\n

From the English Romantics to America\u2019s John Muir and Henry David Thoreau, writers have long advocated for the preservation of nature. Rachel Carson\u2019s\u00a0Silent Spring<\/em>, published in 1962, ignited environmentalists’ ire over the damage wrought by\u00a0pesticides.<\/p>\n

Climate change activism is newer, but still well established. Over the past decades, it has taken the form of marches, lobbying, research, and divestment. In 1988, scientist James Hansen testified before the\u00a0U.S.\u00a0Senate, telling lawmakers that climate change \u201cis already happening now\u201d. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its first assessment in\u00a01992.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe last few months really feel like a moment. But this isn\u2019t the first time. There were similar moments in the 2000s, 1990s and 1980s. You could even say there was a bit of a moment in the 1950s in a way, depending on how you read it. It\u2019s like we come back to the issue every decade or so,\u201d says Alice Bell, who is currently writing a book on the history of climate\u00a0change.<\/p>\n

Strikes<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThe\u00a0BBC\u00a0had a whole climate chaos series in 2006\u2026 There were new campaign groups formed. There were Live Earth concerts. There were protests\u2026 We just called it climate chaos then, rather than climate\u00a0crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n

But if the wave of climate activism we\u2019re seeing today is part of an ongoing cycle of protest, it is also the product of external events. In 2015, nations adopted the Paris Agreement, which set out an ambition to limit global temperature rise to below 1.5C.<\/p>\n

In 2018, the\u00a0IPCC\u00a0released a report on this temperature target, outlining how we get there \u2013 and the consequences of shooting past it. For young people in particular, it made sobering reading: repeated warnings that we have\u00a0\u201ctwelve years to save the planet\u201d<\/a>\u00a0sounds that much scarier when the consequences of failing will be felt across your own\u00a0lifetime.<\/p>\n

People involved in both Extinction Rebellion and the school strikes put the startling success of the movements down to one factor in particular: they have given individuals the power to\u00a0act.<\/p>\n