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The children are the adults now @BloggersRUs

Published by Tom Sullivan on September 21, 2019

The children are the adults now
by Tom Sullivan

Friday was not a good day for “industrial breadwinner masculinity” built upon exploiting and subduing the natural world. The kids won’t have it anymore. They staged massive protests in 150 countries against their elders’ refusal to take action to address the climate crisis. #ClimateStrike

This movement stirred up a lot of press coverage (below). Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old Swedish climate activist, last year began spending Fridays protesting alone outside the Swedish Parliament before others finally joined her. Now she’s now inspired a global movement. There is a clear urgency among these young protesters. One-and-done protests make headlines. Persistent disruption makes change. Can we keep protests going every Friday?

“Adults keep saying we owe it to the young people to give them hope,” Thunberg told the World Economic Forum in January. “But I don’t want your hope, I don’t want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic, I want you to feel the fear I feel every day.”

Franklin Foer shares how the climate crisis has effected his daughter:

My 14-year-old daughter has been inspired by Thunberg to strike today, skipping classes to head to protests in downtown Washington, D.C. She has also suffered bouts of anxiety, and I long to build a seawall that can protect her from her fears. But her example, and Thunberg’s doomsaying, have made me realize that my parental desire to calm is the stuff of childish fantasy; anxiety is the mature response. To protect our children, we need to embrace their despair.

They seem to mean it. But to move entrenched economic powers, they’ll need to be relentless.

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