Lethal Heating: 03/11/19

11/03/2019

Striking For The Future: From Australia To Japan To India, Youths Will Skip School On March 15 To Protest Against Climate Change

South China Morning Post - Zoe Low

Students from at least six Asian countries will take part in Global Strike for Future
But authorities in some countries have warned students not to disrupt classes

A carnival float depicts the school strikes ‘Friday for Future’ with Greta Thunberg during a traditional carnival parade in Düsseldorf, Germany, on March 4. Photo: AP

On March 15, students from at least six countries in Asia will be part of a global school strike to demand concrete action from governments to tackle climate change.
They come from secondary schools and universities in Australia, Bangladesh, India, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea, and will join their peers in the Americas and Europe to take part in the Global Strike for Future.
“We are the ones who will inherit this earth. We deserve to have a say about the kind of future we have, which at this stage could be non-existent unless we stand up and show the politicians how important this is to us,” said 18-year-old Sophie Handford, who has completed high school and is coordinating the strikes in New Zealand.
The protest comes a month after about 10,000 youngsters staged a nationwide school strike across 60 cities in Britain, showing how a grass roots movement inspired by a Swedish girl last summer had taken off.

Students taking part in a climate change protest in London on February 15. Photo: EPA

Greta Thunberg, 16, had planted herself in front of the Swedish parliament in August handing out fliers that said: “You grown-ups do not give a s*** about my future.” Many students around the globe have also been striking every Friday since Thunberg started her protest.
The students interviewed for this article said the movement was largely decentralised, with them learning about the strike on social media. Some kept in touch with other coordinators from abroad through encrypted messaging apps.
A number of them wrote an open letter that British newspaper The Guardian published on March 1. “We demand justice for all past, current and future victims of the climate crisis, and so we are rising up,” the letter said.
“There have been fires in some places where it has become so dry and rising sea levels are hitting our friends in the Pacific hard. We are also fighting for them so they are able to remain in their homes,” said Handford.
This is the first time that New Zealand’s young people will be striking in 24 cities including Auckland and Christchurch to demand the government to limit global warming to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit). Some of their demands include fast tracking paths to reach emission targets and stopping all exploration and extraction of fossil fuels.

Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg. Photo: AFP

In Bangladesh, another first time strike is being organised in Dhaka, Sundarbans and Sylhet by 24-year-old Sabbir Ahmed, who emphasises that this country’s low-lying areas will be most affected by rising sea levels caused by climate change. Sabbir graduated in 2017 and has been working with youth groups to develop professional skills.
“Bangladesh has already seen some unusual weather patterns. Temperatures in the summer rise up to 38 degrees Celsius or more, and last rainy season the floods caused heavy losses to agricultural production,” said Sabbir, who wants governments of industrialised nations to take more responsibility for reducing emissions.
The impact of climate change is already being felt throughout the world, but lower-income countries across Asia, Africa, and the Middle East do not have the resources to adapt to the changes, said Harald Heubaum, an associate professor in global energy and climate policy at the SOAS University of London.
He said developed countries in Europe and North America need to do more in terms of reducing emissions to mitigate the effects of climate change.
“The main polluters, including China and increasingly, India as well, need to invest a lot more so the least developed countries – those that haven’t caused problems, but face [the] consequences because they can’t adapt – can deal with this effectively,” Heubaum said.
China, the United States and India have the highest emissions in the world in 2015, according to the independent Union of Concerned Scientists.

An Indian man cools himself under a public fountain on a hot afternoon in New Delhi. Photo: AP

Indian teen Vidit Baya is demanding his government take action. “Our future is in their hands and we want them to take action not just for us but for the sake of the planet, its people and its survival,” said 17-year-old Baya, who is one of the organisers of the strike in India.
He said India’s status as a developing nation means the government needs to invest in renewable energy such as solar power instead of sticking to “ancient technology” like coal. “With seven out of the 10 most polluted cities in the world in India, it is a shame our condition is getting worse,” he said.
Strikes will take place in Delhi and Udaipur next Friday, and Baya’s team is organising more mass rallies every two months. His group is also working to educate people by going door-to-door and holding open meetings every Friday for youths to share ideas on how to create a better future.
However, Baya said schools and parents have reservations about allowing their children to take part in activism. “Many parents fear their kids might get in trouble with the wrong people. They also think we should focus on our studies and think only about our careers,” he said.
“But our parents and schools do not understand the land is dying,” said Baya, adding many schools refused to let students join environmental campaigns and activities organised by non-governmental organisations and the government.
Hong Kong’s Education Bureau is also opposed to the strike, saying on February 28 that the movement would disrupt order in schools.

Australians protesting against climate change in Brisbane in December. Photo: EPA

In Australia, where 15,000 students walked out of their schools on November 31 last year, students have also been warned against taking part in the upcoming strike. New South Wales education minister Rob Stokes said in an interview that students and teachers who did not show up would be punished, which earned him a swift rebuttal from Greta Thunberg herself.
“Your statement belongs in a museum,” wrote Thunberg on Twitter.
School principals in New Zealand have also warned students who strike they will be marked as truants, local media reported on Thursday.
Yet, the youth movement has caught the attention of climate scientists worldwide, who have written a letter of support for the young strikers published in The Guardian on February 13.
“The global youth movement and organisation is indeed impressive,” said Peter deMenocal, director of the Centre for Climate and Life at Columbia University in New York.
“The breadth and authenticity of this youth movement can turn the tide of public opinion,” said deMenocal, who has worked with leaders of the strike in the US.

An open-cut coal mine in Singleton in Hunter Valley north of Sydney. The Australian government has continued to push for coal as an energy source. Photo: AFP

This really is a grass-roots movement organised by the youthAustralian organiser Zel Whiting

Australian organiser Zel Whiting, who has worked with a larger team to pull together not just the Australian protest but internationally as well, is adamant the strikes are necessary. “Climate-based decisions are decisions that can’t be undone in 20 years’ time,” said the 13-year-old.
Whiting is frustrated with the current Australian government, which has continued to push coal as an energy source for the country. “That will devastate our environment, but we’re starting to sway the general public to our side, which is really good,” he said.
The Australian youth has also managed to gain the support of labour unions, but at the same time, Whiting said, the hardest hurdle to overcome is convincing dismissive adults who think the kids are being used by politicians.
“This really is a grass-roots movement organised by the youth, and climate justice should be totally apolitical and focus on communicating with governments,” said Whiting. “People need to realise that climate change is going to be a problem for their future and for their children for a long time.”

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Woman Fest Founder Plans Training Camp For Climate Rebels

The Guardian - Matthew Taylor

Spring Uprising festival in Bristol will feature bands and civil disobedience instruction

School pupils gathered in Parliament Square last month to protest against government inaction over climate change. Photograph: Guy Smallman/Getty Images

The woman behind the UK’s first female-only festival is setting up a climate activism training camp to instruct hundreds of young people in civil disobedience before a series of environmental protests planned for the coming weeks.
Tiana Jacout is putting on the Spring Uprising festival in Bristol this month for people taking part in the ongoing school strikes and the Extinction Rebellion protests planned for 15 April.
The two-day event will offer the usual festival diet of live bands and DJs alongside civil disobedience training and sessions on climate solutions.
Jacout said: “With thousands of people coming together to face the climate and ecological emergency, this event is intended to help people prepare, organise and celebrate for this historic moment in time together.”
Last month more than 10,000 young people took to the streets across the UK as part of the growing school strike movement. Up to 150,000 people around the world are expected to take part in a global school strike on 15 March.

Separately, thousands of protesters are expected to descend on London on 15 April as part of a global climate action organised by Extinction Rebellion.
The group, known as XR, has established groups in countries around the world and has the support of hundreds of senior academics and scientists.
It is demanding that the UK government tell the truth about the scale of the ecological crisis and enact legally binding policies to reduce carbon emissions to zero by 2025. It also wants the creation of a citizens’ assembly to oversee the transformation to a sustainable economy.
Activists closed down five London bridges for several hours in November, and they say this time they intend to bring widespread disruption to London until their demands are met.

Tiana Jacout
Photograph: Antonio Olmos/The Observer

Jacout said the festival was a chance for people who were considering getting involved in climate campaigns to “come together, get trained, get organised and have a damn good time doing it”.
She added: “One of the real challenges of being in this movement is that every week there is a new scientific study coming out that shortens the time we have left to take action. That is why we need to come together and look after each other. Taking part in civil disobedience is high adrenaline and you need to be looked after and cared for. That, along with training and preparation, is what this festival is about.”
The event, on 16 and 17 March, has sold more than 700 tickets and has the backing of music industry and festival organisers such as Boomtown, Buddhafield and Burn Punk. A dozen music acts including Sam Lee, Dizraeli, Mesadorm, Bellatrix, Pete the Temp, Honeyfeet, Nick Mulvey and the High Breed have been confirmed.
Jacout, who staged Woman Fest last year, said that although non-violent civil disobedience was at the heart of the emerging environment protest movements, “many of the people who have come forward to join may not have been in that situation before”.
“As we saw from our demonstrations in November we are entirely peaceful and although there were lots of police around it was all calm and friendly, but we think that people can’t be too well trained or briefed and the more support we can give each other the more successful the rebellion can be,” she said.
The event will include a talk from school strike activists and video linkups with XR groups around the UK and the rest of the world.
“This is the next step in our response to the threat to life we all face, a potentially life-changing event for attendees,” Jacout said. “For people who have not been involved in XR before, this is perfect moment to come down and see what we are about, to meet and make friends and get properly involved.”

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Veterans Are Concerned About Climate Change, And That Matters

The Conversation - Matthew Motta | Jennifer Spindel | Robert Ralston

Naval Station Norfolk in Virginia, the Navy’s largest base, is endangered by sea level rise. Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Ernest R. Scott

News that the Trump administration plans to create a panel devoted to challenging government warnings about climate change has been met with opposition from members of the U.S. military. Citing concerns about the effects of climate change on national security, more than four dozen top-ranking military officials came out in opposition to the Trump administration’s plan.
Military concern about the effects of climate change on national security is not new. Months before former Secretary James Mattis left the Defense Department in January 2019, he acknowledged that increased coastal flooding and tropical storms, resulting from rising average global temperatures, pose a threat to as many as one-third of U.S. military bases.
In addition to its potential effect on military infrastructure, climate change could pose threats to global security. A recent IPCC report predicts that rising global temperatures, drought and other extreme weather patterns are likely to become more frequent and severe across the globe. This could create competition and conflict for increasingly scarce water and agricultural resources, particularly in the developing world or in fragile states.
Although climate change could pose major risks to national security, few have asked current and veteran members of the armed forces what they think about climate change and its potential effects. Our new survey research finds that most U.S. veteran members of the armed services in our sample think that the planet is warming, and many of them are concerned about what climate change means for U.S. security.

Combating climate change: A call to arms?

Former Secretary of Defense James Mattis, pictured Nov. 26, 2018 in Doral, Florida. Brynn Anderson/AP Photo

Past and present members of the military are more likely to support politically conservative views than politically liberal ones. But to characterize the military as uniformly conservative misses an important element of nuance.
Numerous surveys of active duty service members and veterans in the early 2000s demonstrated that enlisted members of the military tended to vote in patterns similar to their civilian counterparts. However, recent research has pointed to a shift rightward within the military and found that higher-ranking officers and younger vets are especially more likely to be conservative, identify as Republicans, and support President Trump than nonveterans.
Despite their conservative tendencies, there is reason to suspect that armed forces members are concerned about the effects of climate change – a position held most commonly by ideological liberals. Service members might, for example, have observed the impact of major storms or rising sea levels on the day-to-day functioning of military bases. Or they could have used weapons systems that run on renewable energy sources, including aircraft, tanks and solar energy-powered backpacks.
The Pentagon is continuing to take steps to address climate change, despite President Trump saying such preparation should stop. U.S. military personnel are thus likely to have more experience with climate change effects, solutions to it or both.

Our study
To study past and present military personnel’s attitudes about climate change, we conducted a survey between Jan. 17-21, 2019 of 293 U.S. active duty or veteran service members, recruited via the online service Lucid. While this sample is not perfectly representative of the military writ large, it is both ideologically and demographically diverse. Our sample closely resembles veteran population benchmarks on race, educational attainment, and, perhaps most importantly, party identification.
We asked two related questions. First, we asked respondents which of the following statements is closest to their view: (1) “The Earth is getting warmer mostly because of human activity such as burning fossil fuels;” (2) “The Earth is getting warmer mostly because of natural patterns in the Earth’s environment; (3) "There is no solid evidence that the Earth is getting warmer;” or (4) “not sure.”
If respondents answered that the Earth is getting warmer, we then asked how likely it is that “U.S. military bases in coastal or island regions will be damaged by flooding or severe storms” and that “Drought and famine will cause international military conflict for food and water resources.”
First, the survey results showed that even though veterans and active duty service members tend to be politically conservative, their levels of belief in human-caused climate change are virtually the same. In our sample, 44 percent of veterans and active duty service members expressed belief in anthropogenic climate change. This tracks closely with nationally representative estimates of anthropogenic climate change consensus in the U.S. adult population. A 2016 Pew survey that featured a question identical to ours found about 48 percent believed in anthropogenic climate change (although some surveys asking other versions of this question, like this 2018 survey from Gallup, sometimes find higher levels). The results also track closely with a recent survey on the Lucid platform, used to conduct our study, which found that about 50 percent of Americans believe in human-caused climate change.
Second, we found that many veterans and active duty service members are concerned about the effects that climate change might have on security. More than three-quarters, 77 percent, of respondents consider it fairly or very likely that military bases in coastal or island regions will be damaged by flooding or severe storms as a result of climate change. Fewer veterans and active duty service members – 61 percent – consider drought and famine-driven international military conflict over food and water resources fairly or very likely to occur.
Third, we found that veterans and active duty service members who accept the scientific consensus on the causes of climate change are considerably more likely to be concerned about its effects on national security than those who do not.
To be specific, 87 percent of veterans and active duty service members who accept anthropogenic climate change consider damage to U.S. military bases in coastal or island regions due to flooding or severe storms fairly or very likely to occur, compared to 64 percent of those who do not accept anthropogenic climate change. And, 70 percent of veterans and active duty service members who accept anthropogenic climate change consider drought and famine causing international military conflict for food and water resources fairly or very likely to occur, compared to 49 percent of those who do not accept anthropogenic climate change.

Why this matters

U.S. citizens appreciate and respect veterans. Some believe that veterans’ views on climate change could influence others. fiyaazz/Shutterstock.com

Belief in climate change among past and active military personnel is noteworthy, because veterans are an important and influential voting block in American politics. Veterans comprise about 7 percent of the U.S. voting population, and millions of dollars are spent every year trying to win their political support, and advance their policy priorities US$13 million in independent expenditures.
Service members’ views could also affect the views of civilians, thus also pressuring political leaders to take action. The American public is deferential to and has a high degree of trust in the military. If enough veterans express concern about climate change, this reliably conservative voting bloc may push Republican officials to take policy action on climate change.

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Generation Greta Will Step Up Their Climate Strikes On 15 March

Medium - Alexander Verbeek

On this cold and rainy morning, I joined Greta Thunberg in front of the Swedish parliament for her climate strike.

It is just 29 weeks ago that she sat there for the first time. All alone, since nobody she had asked wanted to join her. But she didn’t give up and she is now the founder of an international youth movement that challenges the world’s leaders to act on climate change.
Her ‘Fridays For Future’ protest has inspired and mobilised hundreds of thousands of students all over the world. Together they ask us, the grown-ups, to look into the mirror. We have to shamefully admit that our generation made a mess of our global environmental responsibilities, as well as quite a few other tasks to keep this planet a liveable place.
Today, on International Women’s Day, she was awarded as ‘Woman of the Year’ by two Swedish newspapers.
Many famous, inspiring leaders would never have been recruited if you would have asked a specialised agency to find you a new leader. And I guess that 16-year old Greta would not have met any of the criteria a recruitment office would use to search for a new inspiring global leader. But for me, and millions of others, she is a source of inspiration. Her direct communication is the wake up call that the world needs. Especially now that we have nearly run out of time to act.
Last November, I saw her speak at the Stockholm TEDx event, not far from where her climate strike had started in the summer. The huge conference hall seemed even more intimidating when the small, then 15-year old, Greta walked on stage. But she captivated the audience with the most clear call for climate action I had ever heard. There is no time to lose for a rapid reduction of greenhouse gas reductions, we don’t need to wait for more research, and all of us, including our leaders, need to act now.
Soon after, she travelled by public transport to COP24 in Katowice, where she told world leaders to stop behaving like children: “you are not mature enough to tell it like it is, even that burden you leave to us children”.
When she arrived by train in Davos, she told the world’s business leaders it is insane for a record 1500 of them to arrive by private jet to discuss climate change.
The movement that Greta started is still growing. On Friday 15 March, 860 actions are planned in 75 countries, and the list is still growing.
This massive youth movement seems to become an intergenerational conflict at a scale that we have not seen since the late 1960s. While politicians tell them to go back to school, there is no stopping them and it may soon be about more than just climate change.

While Greta keeps focussed on the climate message, other young people will add governance, economy, equality, justice and power relations on Generation Greta’s wish list for change. Politicians better pay attention.
Every year on 10 December, I am surprised that we still don’t have a Nobel Prize for the Environment. But until that issue is resolved, I hope that Greta Thunberg will be this years’ Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

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