The house is on fire

I first heard of the climate change school strikes from my grandad, one of the ‘make love not war’ rebels of his generation. He said it looks like the young people will be the ones to change things. He has plenty of doubt in corrupt governments and powerful corporations but he has hope in us.
This seemed too good to be true so I did research. And sure enough, there was a real story of inspiration.
An unknown Swedish teenager had taken the facts of climate change to heart--they were bad enough to be a cause of her depression--but it didn’t stop there. She couldn’t deny it like so many of us do and took to sitting outside the Swedish Parliament every Friday. Her protests went viral and gradually people joined her. That was August 2018 and she was only 15 years old. Now Greta Thunberg has spoken at the UN Climate Change Summit, to the European Parliament and the UK Parliament. Her movement “School Strikes for Climate” and “Extinction Rebellion” have tens of thousands of people protesting across the UK and by March they had protests in over 2000 cities worldwide. They use nonviolent civil protest, marches, die-ins, and more creative methods like gluing themselves to things or stripping in Parliament, similar to the civil rights movement in America or the Suffragettes. The media headlines read “Protests Delay Commuters” when the real news is “CO2 Levels Threaten Humanity." 
Some progress has been made, though, with the UK government declaring a Climate Emergency and gaining the issue more of the attention it deserves. The Guardian has changed the terminology they use from “Climate Change” to “Climate Emergency” or “Climate Crisis” to reflect the reality of the situation. This is a good start but a lot more needs to happen quickly. 

So what are the facts?
At the end of 2018 the UN General Secretary warned that human life on earth now faces a “direct existential threat." Sea ice is disappearing and natural disasters are increasing in intensity and occurence. “On land the high level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is making rice crops less nutritious, threatening the well-being and food security for billions of people.” The full speech is well worth reading, and the link is at the bottom of the page.

• Globally, species are going extinct at rates of up to 1,000 times the background rates typical of Earth’s past. This is a result of human impact on the environment and seriously threatens our food sources.
• “Ecosystems, species, wild populations, local varieties and breeds of domesticated plants and animals are shrinking, deteriorating or vanishing. The essential, interconnected web of life on Earth is getting smaller and increasingly frayed. This loss is a direct result of human activity and constitutes a direct threat to human well-being in all regions of the world.” --Prof. Settele
• “We have already observed impacts of climate change on agriculture. We have assessed the amount of climate change we can adapt to. There’s a lot we can’t adapt to even at 2ºC. At 4ºC the impacts are very high and we cannot adapt to them.” – Dr. Rachel Warren, University of East Anglia
• We have already raised the planet’s average surface temperature by 1.1°C due to industry and most of this has been in the past 35 years.
• Year after year we break records for minimum sea ice and hottest years.
• “2°C warming would threaten to inundate areas now occupied by 130 million people while increase to 4°C could lock in enough eventual sea level rise to submerge land currently home to 470 to 760 million people globally.” *
• By 2050, land degradation and climate change together are predicted to reduce crop yields by an average of 10 per cent globally and up to 50 per cent in certain regions. 

In other words, If our parents don’t make change, we will die of climate change.
Or if not us in the wealthy west, millions of people in poverty who are disproportionately affected by it will. They are already paying a huge death toll with the increase in floods, drought, famine, wildfires, and war.

The earth is not a plastic cup: we can’t take what we need and throw it away. We need to treat it like a quality piece of clothing handed down from our grandparents. It’s a precious heritage which needs care when using and patching up in places. Not like an item of fast fashion, here today to make us feel good and disposed of tomorrow.

The choices we make as individuals affect the environment. We should recycle and not buy more than we need. We should use our money as consumers to show companies that the environment is important to us. We should use public transport or walk whenever possible. We should reduce meat consumption.
But this isn’t enough. We are literally facing threat to our existence as a species. We need large scale political action.

I didn’t know it was this serious until now.
I don’t know what to do. It’s terrifying.
But it’s real. Truth is better than false hope.
I’ll write again when I know how to make radical change.

Take care,
Hannah

Sources:
https://www.un.org/sg/en/content/sg/statement/2018-09-10/secretary-generals-remarks-climate-change-delivered
http://sealevel.climatecentral.org/uploads/research/Global-Mapping-Choices-Report.pdf
https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/blog/2019/05/nature-decline-unprecedented-report/
https://public.wmo.int/en/media/press-release/wmo-confirms-2016-hottest-year-record-about-11°c-above-pre-industrial-era
* http://sealevel.climatecentral.org/uploads/research/Global-Mapping-Choices-Report.pdf

More info:
Full UN report
https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/

Easy to read summary:
https://rebellion.earth/the-truth/the-emergency/

Get involved in protests:
https://www.schoolstrike4climate.com/

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