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| protesting across London last week |
By New Worker
correspondent
On
Good Friday around 15 youths – all aged under 17 years old – held a large
banner with the words “Are we the last generation” on the pavement outside
Heathrow airport in London. A heavy police presence stopped the teenagers from
standing on the road.
“I’m Felix, I’m 14 years old. I’m doing
this because when I have children I want to be able to tell them I did
everything I could to protect their futures.”
“I’m Samar Faraj, I’m 14, and I’m doing
this because there are things that need doing that aren’t being done, and in 30
years time, I don’t want to be looking back on this and regretting not doing
everything I could do to help prevent the disasters we’re facing.”
Extinction Rebellion Youth is a network
for everyone born after 1990: “We are a generation that have never known a
stable climate and that will be defined by how the world responds to the
climate and ecological crisis.”
“I’m Mia, I’m 13. I’m doing this because
something has to change, I’m being told to make decisions about my future when
it can’t even be guaranteed the Earth has one.”
“I’m Maya Rivett-Martinez, I’m 15, and the
constant fear for my future is what gives me the need for change.”
The campaigning teenagers at London
airport were part of the wave of climate change protests that paralysed parts
of central London last week in demonstrations called by the Extinction
Rebellion movement to attract attention to the ecological catastrophe they
believe is imminent if nothing is done to halt it.
The global aviation industry produces two
per cent of all human-induced carbon dioxide emissions. If global aviation was
a country, it would rank in the top 10 emitters. Unfortunately, the emissions
from this industry continue to increase at a truly alarming rate. Parliament
has approved a policy for airport expansion. The Government is moving in
completely the wrong direction.
Last week the godfather of climate science
Dr James Hansen, the American space scientist who first alerted the world to
the dangers of climate change more than 30 years ago, sent an open letter to
the British people: “I write in recognition that citizens throughout the UK,
led increasingly by the young – those who stand to lose most – now are rising
to demand that national leaders develop and adhere to a viable path away from
calamitous global warming.”
To every parent, and every grandparent, “I
urge you in particular to take a stand, so as to not let the full burden of
responsibility befall our children. Arm yourself with information of the
highest quality, think for yourself, and then exercise your full intellectual
and moral capacity to help your nation and our planet survive.
“I have no doubt that the era of fossil
fuels is drawing to a close. But questions remain as to the speed of the coming
transition and, in direct consequence of that speed, the nature of what will be
left in its wake. I cannot answer, in particular, whether our civilisation will
survive in any recognisable form the assault on nature and the human
dislocation attending loss of our planet’s great coastal cities that we of
necessity will confront with continued unarrested climate change.”
In his letter Hansen sets out the truth
about the ecological emergency: “The foregoing, accordingly, constitutes my
best brief effort to explain our present, serious, global, climate crisis. I
will have failed if, upon its review, the reader decides to shirk his or her
fundamental responsibility. Now, more than before, we need to bring to bear our
full acumen, time, and resources so as to demand and forge a viable future.”
This week, the words of the world’s most
respected climate scientist were echoed by wild-life broadcaster and naturalist
Sir David Attenborough: “If we have not taken dramatic action within the next
decade we could face irreversible damage to the natural world and the collapse
of our societies. What happens now and in these next few years will profoundly
affect the next few thousand years.”
