Year
Tens of thousands of students were joined by adults in abandoning schools and workplaces for a wave of climate strikes across the country.
Climate change strikes took center stage in more than 1,000 U.S. cities on Sept. 20, with major rallies in New York, Washington D.C., Boston, Chicago, San Francisco and Miami. Globally, more than 4,500 strikes were planned in 150 countries.
Declaring a "global emergency," a handful of local protesters blocked off north State leading up to the Utah Capitol.
Some 2,000 miles away, the young strikers' totemic figure, 16-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, took part in the New York walkout to speak to protesters in Manhattan. Leading up to her appearance, New York authorities announced its population of 1.1 million students could skip school to attend the strikes.
In March, more than a million students took part in a global climate strike. But this iteration was swelled further by adults who walked out of their workplaces in support of the young protesters who demanded a halt to fossil fuel projects and a complete shift to renewable energy.
Dozens of companies, including Patagonia and Ben and Jerry's, announced they planned on supporting striking staff, with major unions also backing the walkouts. Thousands of websites, such as Tumblr and Kickstarter, went "dark."
"This is going to be the largest mobilization for climate action in history," Alexandria Villaseñor, a 14-year-old who has been protesting outside U.N. headquarters every Friday since December, said before the momentous occasion.
"World leaders can either listen now or listen later because our voice is only going to get louder as the climate crisis gets more urgent. Adults need to step up and support us. Civil disobedience breaks the system, and once it's broken, it's an amazing opportunity to make things better."
Dulce Belen Ceballos Arias, an 18-year-old from San Francisco, said she participated because, "I want children of my own and I want them to have a better life than me. I don't want that to be taken away by climate change."
Students in Boston were also excused from school. "We are excited to disrupt business as usual, to demand a Green New Deal," Audrey Maurine Xin Lin, an 18-year-old organizer in Boston, said in reference to the resolution endorsed by progressive Democrats to enact a World War II-style economic mobilization to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions.
The strikes were backed by officials in several cities. "When your house is on fire, somebody needs to sound the alarm," read a joint statement by the mayors of New York, Paris and Los Angeles. "Young people in our cities, displaying incredible maturity and dignity, are doing just that."
The sprawling strikes represent a remarkable escalation of Thunberg's decision last year to start skipping school on Fridays to protest against inaction by the Swedish government over the climate crisis. A global movement has since grown from her stand, with young people expressing outrage that their generation is being left a world with increasingly punishing heat waves, storms, flooding and societal unrest.
Thunberg, who abjures plane travel, arrived in New York on a solar-powered racing yacht in late August and has since become a focal point for the climate movement, appearing on talk shows and in Congress to excoriate its members, as well as meeting Barack Obama, who called her "one of our planet's greatest advocates."
Her stateside sojourn culminated with a U.N. climate summit. Addressing world leaders who assembled to help revive the flagging efforts to avoid disastrous global warming, her comments resounded on an international scale.
The U.S. and Brazil, lead by nationalist leaders disdainful of climate science, have slowed momentum, with a U.N. report released last month warning that the required ambition is lacking among most countries.
"The audacity of kids simply asking leaders to lead is extraordinary. We are indebted to them," said Rachel Kyte, special representative for the U.N. secretary general for sustainable energy. "They are rightly impatient.
"Not every country is aligned to the need for fast action. The hope is that the U.S. will join in at the point where public opinion is able to influence the national voice more than it does today."
A version of this story originally appeared in The Nation. It is republished here as part of City Weekly's partnership with Covering Climate Now, a global collaboration of more than 250 news outlets to strengthen climate coverage.
'How Dare You!' Greta Thunberg Rebukes World Leaders
"We will not let you get away with this," the 16-year-old climate strike leader told the U.N.
By Oliver Milman
After rallying 4 million people into the streets in the biggest global climate strike yet, Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg brought her message inside United Nations headquarters the following Monday with a furious speech that repeatedly demanded of world leaders, "How dare you?"
Seated alongside U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres and two other young climate activists, Thunberg opened the U.N. Climate Action Summit by blasting the assembled heads of government with a speech that was equal parts "J'accuse" and hardball politics. "My message [to world leaders] is that we'll be watching you," Thunberg began. Then, as tears of rage and grief overtook her, the founder of the global climate strike movement all but shouted, "I shouldn't be here. I should be back home, at school.... You come to us young people for hope. How dare you! You have stolen my childhood and my dreams. And I am one of the lucky ones. People all over the world are suffering and dying. And all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!"
"For more than 30 years, the science has been crystal clear," Thunberg continued. "How dare you look away and say that you are doing enough!" Noting that the world's carbon budget for a 1.5 degree Celsius future will be exhausted within 8.5 years under business-as-usual according to the scientists of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, she repeated, "How dare you pretend that this can be solved with business as usual?" Predicting that none of their speeches would wrestle with those imposing numbers, Thunberg declared that world leaders are "still not mature enough to tell it like it is." The fury returning to her face, she warned, "You are betraying us. ... If you choose to fail us, then I say, 'We will never forgive you.'"
As Thunberg's speech appeared live on one internal U.N. video feed, a second feed showed President Donald Trump arriving at the U.N.—but not for the Climate Action Summit. In a clear snub, the White House instead reserved a conference room where Trump would attend a meeting on religious freedom along with Secretary of State Michael Pompeo. Michael Bloomberg, the former New York City mayor who now serves as a U.N. special envoy on climate action, called out the U.S. president by name in a separate speech, to the Climate Action Summit, declaring in a perfect deadpan that he thanked Trump for coming to the U.N. and hoped that suggestions "will be helpful as he formulates a climate policy" for the U.S.
Thunberg, for her part, made it clear that she and other young activists will take no prisoners as they demand emergency action against climate breakdown. In a challenge to Trump and all leaders who are not stepping up, Thunberg warned, her eyes flashing, "We will not let you get away with this. Right here, right now, is where we draw the line. The world is waking up. And change is coming, whether you like it or not."
This story originally appeared in The Nation. It is republished here as part of City Weekly's partnership with Covering Climate Now, a global collaboration of more than 250 news outlets to strengthen climate coverage.
Honk for the Environment
Small but mighty group blocks access to Utah Capitol.
By Peter Holslin
Walking up the hill on State Street toward the Utah Capitol, protesters brought out the banners.
"DECLARE A CLIMATE EMERGENCY."
"GENOCIDE-ECOCIDE."
"ACT NOW."
Usually when activists stage a protest at the Capitol, they'll gather on the south steps. This time, environmentalists mounted their event in front of the Capitol. In the middle of the street. Blocking rush-hour traffic.
Cars honked and motorists screamed just after 4:30 p.m., Sept. 19, as members of the local grassroots groups Civil Riot and Elders Rising—along with a new group, the local chapter of U.K.-based Extinction Rebellion—manned their posts. Dozens of cars were backed up all the way down State, and members traversed the sidewalk, explaining to drivers why they were there. Another member of the group chanted and sang songs.
"When the people rise up, then the powers come down," they sang as cars and SUVs pulled U-turns and drivers screamed insults amid the snarl of stalled traffic stretching down the hill.
I was the only reporter who showed up to cover the protest. Interestingly, I probably wouldn't have been able to even attend if I hadn't walked to the Capitol—if I'd taken a car or a bus to get there, I would've been stuck in traffic and missed the whole thing.
"We're all so concerned about what's happening and we want the governor and all the leaders to declare a climate emergency and start doing what needs to be done," Jill Merritt, a 72-year-old member of Elders Rising, told me. "In 1992, at the Eco Summit in Rio, we allowed the issue to be framed as an environmental issue instead of a human rights issue. What the children are telling us is this has been a human rights issue all along. They have a right to air they can breathe and water they can drink, and they have a right to a livable planet."
"If you're under 30—I bet you are—you have a good chance of witnessing radical destabilization of life on Earth," she added.
Merritt explained that the activists were blocking the streets as a warm-up for the week's Global Climate Strike, a worldwide protest timed to coincide with the 2019 Climate Action Summit held by the United Nations in New York the following Monday. Hundreds of young Utahns ditched school to join in a march from the City and County Building up State Street to the Capitol, The Salt Lake Tribune reported.
It was only a matter of time before the cops showed up. The activists' brazen approach made me wonder if this protest would take an ugly turn, but after a summer that saw an increasingly confrontational relationship between the authorities and grassroots activists, this time around, there were no aggressive actions and no arrests.
Two Utah Highway Patrol troopers consulted with protesters and then stepped in to redirect traffic. They also worked to defuse the situation when one woman jumped out of her car and started screaming at the protesters. A few SLC police officers showed up and helped clear out the street while making no effort to prevent the activists from holding up their banners.
After about 40 minutes, the activists packed up and seemed to call it a day. But as soon as they got to the bottom of State, they pulled out the banners once again to stage an impromptu, definitely unpermitted march down the middle of south State all the way to the City and County Building. They ended up blocking off yet more traffic while a motorcade of at least 10 police vehicles with flashing red lights—including squad cars, motorcycles and black police vans—followed behind.
"We insist that our leaders act now. If nonviolent direct action is the only way to get them to listen to the people, so be it," Extinction Rebellion local coordinator Adair Kovac stated in an emailed statement to media later that evening. "We must keep raising the alarm, and we will. The alternative is social and environmental collapse."
Climate Action Along the Wasatch Front
A conversation on how to improve action on local climate change.
By Ray Howze
Jeff Bousson is a program manager for the local nonprofit Utah Clean Energy, which is helping to put on Utah Climate Week. Bousson (pictured above, center) spoke with City Weekly about where the Wasatch Front stands on climate action and topics the public should be thinking about when it comes to climate change.
CW: What does it mean to you to be a good steward of the environment?
JB: It's someone that provides empathy and compassion and is aware that our current systems are not completely isolated from the natural environment. Having an understanding that having a sustainable future requires us to think ahead and to evaluate what we're doing in our daily lives. And determine if that's going to be detrimental to future generations.
Do you think Utah has done enough in recent years to address climate change locally? If not, why?
To be frank, I don't think anybody has done enough on climate action. Of course, there's been some intriguing developments recently—something I think that certainly should be highlighted is the Community Renewable Energy Act. It was passed in the state of Utah and it's quite unprecedented because it gives constituents and communities served by Rocky Mountain Power a choice of how they want their electricity to be produced. That was passed this year. It authorizes a pathway for communities to achieve net-zero 100% renewable energy by 2030. The reason this happened is because there was a willing supplier—Rocky Mountain Power—as well as multiple communities, including Salt Lake City, Park City, Summit County, Moab and Cottonwood Heights wanting to explore alternative options of how they can pursue clean electricity and clean, renewable energy.
In short, no, we haven't done enough. However, the state of Utah is the only state in the entire nation with the exception of New York City that actually has an official Climate Week. Also, we have the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute that is working with a diverse set of stakeholders throughout the state to provide policy recommendations for the upcoming 2020 state Legislature and to produce climate-related policy recommendations. No, we haven’t done enough, and one of our biggest goals for Utah Climate Week, and also year-round, is to make climate action and climate change a nonpartisan issue. Unfortunately, it’s become a partisan issue.
What are some steps you think people or local governments can take today to help our local climate?
Steps local governments can take in order to reduce their carbon footprint would include adopting a resolution no later than Dec. 31, 2019, stating the clear goal of achieving net-100% renewable energy by 2030. Other steps local governments can review, look at it from a greenhouse-gas footprint perspective. The biggest contributions of our greenhouse gas footprint comes down to buildings and transportation, as well as agriculture. Looking at those different sectors, depending on their resources, they can look for the low-hanging fruit, which is absolutely energy efficiency. It certainly is not as sexy as renewable energy, but energy efficiency is some of the most no-cost or low-cost solutions that save people money ... when you look at air quality, I believe it's up to 50% of our poor air quality emissions come from transportation. Begin to visualize how we want our communities to look like in the future so we can infuse equity within this approach. How do we work together instead of working in silos and address the growing population?
Do you ever see a time where the Wasatch Front might be inversion free?
I envision there to be pathways moving forward for communities to address our serious air-quality situation. Topics like the inland port, an expanding population, don't do us any favors. Not to mention, there are some things out of our hands as far as the interstate system that we have. But we're seeing more and more communities, for example, Park City is playing a big leadership role in bringing together mountain towns throughout the entire Intermountain West to talk about how they can combine resources and share experience and knowledge in order to move the needle in reducing poor air quality. In short, I think there's a lot of work that needs to be done and in order for that to happen, we're going to have to prioritize community over economic development. We are not anti-economic growth, but we should not look at economic growth as the only metric to have a safe, healthy and sustainable community.
We know about some of the worldwide misconceptions about climate change, but what are some local ones you’ve heard from people?
I don’t have conversations about whether climate change is real. I don’t get those questions so I don’t have a lot of examples to share. The questions I get now are, ‘What can I do about this?’ ‘What are the biggest challenges?’ ‘What can our communities do to address this issue?’ An easy one that comes to folks’ mind, for example, yesterday, some snow fell along the Wasatch Front. So there you go, there’s snow. Look at 2018’s winter in comparison to 2019’s winter. They’re completely different. We had a lot of precipitation, which certainly helps. But climate is different than weather. What you see on a daily basis or just one winter, if we have another winter with a lot of precipitation, that doesn’t mean the Great Salt Lake or snow level pack is where it needs to be. The common misconception of climate vs. weather is one of the biggest ones. … I think it’s important and imperative to say, ‘Yeah, last year’s winter was fantastic and if we get another one, that’s greatly needed,’ but that’s not indicative of where we’re heading in terms of the climate crisis we face and how it’s going to impact our water supplies.
What do you hope people get out of Utah Climate Week?
I'm hoping that conversations around our climate crisis are elevated. There are statistics out there that prove it's a topic all of us recognize and is a legitimate crisis and we need to do something about it. However, these aren't conversations we're having around the dinner table or with friends. It's a complicated issue. The reason we haven't been able to move the needle as much as we should is because it's a cultural challenge. There needs to be cultural will, not just political will, to address our climate crisis. We want to have new partners and new faces and more members of the general public engaging on this issue. The whole purpose is to celebrate some of the successes we've been able to advance on a community and state level, but also look for opportunities to work together to move the needle on climate action. We want to put on the forefront of people's minds that we as a community need to come together on this issue.
Upcoming Utah Climate Week Events:
Mayor's Townhall: Stewardship of the Air and Climate
Thursday, Oct. 3, 6:30-8 p.m.
Albion Middle School, 2755 Newcastle Drive, Sandy
The Citizen's Climate Lobby hosts a panel with Millcreek Mayor Jeff Silvestrini, Cottonwood Heights Mayor Michael Peterson, Sandy Mayor Kurt Bradburn, University of Utah atmospheric scientist Logan Mitchell, BYU professor of law Brigham Daniels and Climate Advocate and University of Utah student Piper Christian.
Community Climate Connections: 2019 Climate and Health Symposium
Friday, Oct. 4, and Saturday, Oct. 5, 11 a.m.-6 p.m.
Clark Planetarium, 110 S. 400 West
Several community leaders, researchers and practitioners will share impacts, solutions and information related to climate change and public health during Salt Lake County and Clark Planetarium's fourth annual climate symposium. Attendees are encouraged to register on Eventbrite for Saturday's evening panel to be held at the planetarium's IMAX theater.
