Two things were proved on Friday 15th February: the first, that climate change affects everybody and needs to be stopped; the second, that angry teenagers can make a serious impact.
Perhaps the most recognised portrait of middle-class suburbia is the “snowflake generation teen”: the overplayed stereotype of tree-hugging millennials, crushing their avocados, going vegan and running their exercise bikes on hydropower. All this talk of climate change and our role in destroying the environment is just another overreaction to a drudgingly slow process of a warming the planet only a couple of degrees Celsius. How big of a deal can it really be?
The “Climate Change March” mid-February led thousands of young people onto the streets of London to raise their voices in protest of the lack of attention older generations have paid to climate change. Students of all ages skipped school on Friday, missing out on classes vital to their secondary education as a sacrifice to the rest of the world. One girl held a banner which read “we’re missing our lessons to teach you one”. Others were more political, and blamed the current conservative government for endorsing schemes that produced heavy and damaging pollution and for not doing enough to protect our environment and planet to try and keep it green for as long as possible. For example, some held signs demanding “Tories out, Corbyn in with socialist policies.”
The protesters marched through Whitehall, but their voices weren’t just heard in London; there were similar marches and school strikes going on in America on the same day, and several countries in Europe are also brimming with adolescents eager to protect the planet which has served us so well these last couple billion years.
How is it that one species can destroy the habitats of thousands of others, and then ignore those protesting for change?
Be the change.
Stop climate change.
