SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
cop24
Global Climate Strike in Pictures: Millions of Students Walk Out to Demand Planetary Transformation
Since then, Thunberg has admonished and appealed to world leaders at COP24 and Davos, successfully securing a commitment from the European Union to fight the climate crisis while inspiring strikes all over the world. European students began holding weekly walkouts in Brussels in December, while Australian, and German young people are among those who have organized strikes as well.
"We have been born into this world and we have to live with this crisis, and our children and our grandchildren," Thunberg told a crowd of her peers in Stockholm in Friday. "We are facing the greatest existential crisis humanity has ever faced. And yet it has been ignored. You who have ignored it know who you are."
In Pictures:
On social media, supporters posted images and videos of students chanting, marching, and waving signs demanding action from their elected officials as well as rebuking some leaders who have criticized the students for skipping school. As one sign in London read, "I'll do my work when you do yours."
Brussels:
Minneapolis, Minnesota:
Montreal:
Lisbon:
Oh boy, look what happened in Lisbon, Portugal.#FridaysForFuture #ClimateStrike pic.twitter.com/K1Ew1Zg4ey
-- Angela Fay (@lifelearner47) March 15, 2019
New York:
Kyiv, Ukraine:
Santiago, Chile:
Paris:
School Strikes Take Off as Legacy From 'Grandfather of Climate Science'
This ongoing political inaction is what drives the burgeoning school climate strikes inspired by Swedish girl Greta Thunberg, who boldly warned leaders at COP24 that "people will not wait for change, we will tell them change is coming".
But Broecker - who passed away in a New York City hospital this week at the age of 87 - did not get to see the concerted climate action he called for throughout much of his working life.
In the 1970s, when Broecker correctly predicted that rising carbon dioxide emissions would lead to atmospheric warming - and in doing so broke with now famously incorrect predictions of global cooling - the impacts of climate change were not yet visible.
Throughout the 1980s, as the scientific consensus on global warming increased and other leading scientists such as James Hansen called for political action, governments debated and discussed the threat of climate change.
At the same time, sceptics and fossil fuel companies consistently sowed doubt about climate science and sought to undermine solutions.
Talk and political inaction has followed in the two decades since, while temperatures have continued to rise. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has said the 20 warmest years on record have occurred in the past 22 years. The past four years have been the world's warmest.
The result is that the effects of this warming are now visible and weather extremes experienced around the world are being increasingly linked to climate change.
This year has kicked off where 2018 ended, with extreme weather in many parts of the world - record heat, wildfires and rainfall in South America and Australasia, dangerous and extreme cold in North America and heavy snowfall in the Alps and Himalayas.
Climate change is the greatest threat humanity has faced and the urgency of action has never been greater. Last October, the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned that we have just 12 years left to save the climate.
But there is hope. The inspirational climate strikes from Greta Thunberg and Alexandria Villasenor in the US and many others like them show the kind of resolve and sense of purpose required. The youth suing their governments in the US and Germany are also leading the way.
Now, in the lead-up to an international school climate strike on March 15, we must all show solidarity to the youth taking action.
It must not be left to the young to clean up the climate mess older generations have created. There is still time to avert chaos, but it requires the world's politicians and corporations to accept and embrace the responsibility of action.
Though toxic algae blooms like this occur naturally, they have grown in frequency and intensity in recent years, with elevated water temperatures from climate change being one of many likely reasons. (c) Steve Nesius
The equation is simple, the challenge is great, but the possibilities endless. Global CO2 emissions can and must be halved by 2030 before falling to net zero by 2050 at the latest.
Although leaders failed to commit to heightened climate action at COP24 - just two months after the IPCC's dire warning - they can rectify that failure now and in the lead-up to the UN Secretary-General's Climate Summit in September by ramping up action.
As the new generation walks out of school and takes to the streets carrying forth the warnings of climate science forerunners such as Broecker, it's time our politicians showed the same courage and vision and acted in solidarity with them. The time is now and we still have time, but only just.
With US 'Drilling Towards Disaster,' Report Warns Anything Less Than Urgent Green New Deal Will Be 'Too Little, Too Late'
These are just two alarming findings from a report (pdf) published Wednesday by Oil Change International (OCI), which warns that--unless radical action on the scale of a Green New Deal is taken--U.S. fossil fuel production could single-handedly imperil the world's ability to adequately confront the climate crisis before it's too late.
"Our findings present an urgent and existential emergency for lawmakers in the United States at all levels of government. The oil and gas industry is expanding further and faster in the United States than in any other country at precisely the time when we must begin rapidly decarbonizing to prevent runaway climate disaster," said Kelly Trout, senior research analyst at OCI and co-author of the report, which was produced in collaboration with 350.org, Friends of the Earth, and over a dozen other progressive organizations.
"This report should be a wake-up call for elected officials who consider themselves to be climate leaders," Trout added. "We need a complete overhaul of our economy with a Green New Deal, and that overhaul must include standing up to the fossil fuel industry in order to take us off this path of devastation for our climate and communities. Anything less than a full, swift, and just managed decline of fossil fuel production is too little, too late."
Titled "Drilling Towards Disaster," OCI's report estimates that the continued expansion of massive fossil fuel extraction and pipeline projects throughout the U.S. under President Donald Trump has put the nation on track to account for 60 percent of global growth in fossil fuel production between 2019 and 2030--the year by which United Nations experts say the world must cut carbon emissions in half to avert planetary catastrophe.
According to OCI's research, the U.S. is expanding oil and gas extraction "at least four times more than any other country."
Additionally, the new analysis finds that the United States is on pace to release 120 billion tons of new carbon pollution--"equivalent to the lifetime CO2 emissions of nearly 1,000 coal-fired power plants"--into the atmosphere between 2018 and 2050.
"If not curtailed, U.S. oil and gas expansion will impede the rest of the world's ability to manage a climate-safe, equitable decline of oil and gas production," the report warns.
OCI's report comes just days after new figures from the independent research firm Rhodium Group showed that carbon emissions surged by 3.4 percent in 2018, thanks in part to the Trump Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) ongoing efforts to roll back regulations aimed at reducing greenhouse gas pollution.
To begin reversing this planet-threatening increase in fossil fuel production--which the Trump administration has gleefully touted as the president denies the human caused-climate crisis--OCI's report offers a series of recommendations that would begin aligning U.S. policy with the urgent demands of the scientific evidence.
These recommendations include:
- Banning all "new leases, licenses, or permits that enable new fossil fuel exploration or production, or new long-lived infrastructure such as pipelines, export terminals, or refineries";
- Developing a plan to phase out existing fossil fuel production that priorities the poor and vulnerable communities that are most severely impacted by the climate crisis;
- Halting all "subsidies and other public finance for the fossil fuel industry";
- Backing a Green New Deal that "ensures a rapid and just transition to 100 percent renewable energy";
- Rooting out the influence of fossil fuel money on the American political system.
As Common Dreams has reported, momentum for a Green New Deal has grown throughout the U.S. thanks to persistent organizing and action by the youth-led Sunrise Movement and bold progressives like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who helped push the ambitious proposal into mainstream political discussion.
"Right now, we're on a sinking boat, and instead of just scooping water out, we must take immediate action to patch the hole where it's gushing in."
--Patrick McCully, Rainforest Action Network
According to a survey published in December, 81 percent of Americans support a Green New Deal.
May Boeve, executive director of 350.org, said in a statement that OCI's research "adds even more urgency to the need for a just transition off of fossil fuels to a renewable energy economy."
"To prevent the worst impacts of climate change, we must keep oil, coal, and gas in the ground," Boeve said. "It's time for public officials at every level to follow the lead of communities on the frontlines of the climate crisis and support bold climate policy."
Patrick McCully of the Rainforest Action Network agreed, noting that incremental measures are not nearly enough to sufficiently address the global climate crisis and prevent the worst-case scientific predictions from becoming reality.
"Right now, we're on a sinking boat, and instead of just scooping water out, we must take immediate action to patch the hole where it's gushing in," McCully concluded. "This means we must put a full-stop to fossil fuel expansion, or we all sink into climate chaos. U.S. policymakers--as well as the private sector, like the Wall Street banks that are funding this extraction--must facilitate phasing out extraction while phasing in an equitable transition to renewable energy that supports communities and workers."
Most Popular