Thursday, August 22, 2019

Young and Old Together in Global Climate Strike


'Future Hope' Column 

By Ted Glick 

It is always encouraging when an international call for unified action on the climate crisis is put out and there’s a widespread, positive response to it at the grassroots. This has been happening periodically since the mid-2000’s, at a time when, compared to today, there wasn’t much of a popular movement on the climate issue.

Today, one month out from the Global Climate Strike beginning on September 20 and going ‘til the 27th, the situation is very different. The need for action on climate is widely accepted, even in the United States, stronghold of the enemy of a decent future, the fossil fuel industry.

The dates for this week of action were chosen to coincide with a UN Climate Summit being held on the 23rd of September in NYC. The hope is that this summit will accelerate actions to implement the 2015 Paris Agreement on Climate Change. That agreement isn’t strong enough to solve the crisis, but there’s no question that acceleration is definitely needed given the acceleration of extreme weather events and the very real possibility that we are getting into climate tipping points territory.

In a press release posted two days ago on the https://globalclimatestrike.net website, it was reported that: ”In addition to people walking out of work to join strikes, marches and rallies, events include music concerts, mass bike rides, teach-ins, people’s assemblies, protests targeting fossil fuel companies, bike races and even a demonstration in someone’s living room!”
Unions in Europe are getting involved:

“The leadership of one of Germany’s largest unions is encouraging its over 2 million members to join the strikes. Italy’s largest union representing 5.5 million workers just announced it will mobilise its members on 27 September.”

Click here for the full article. 

Source: tedglick.com 

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