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Kids From At Least 112 Countries, Including the US, Go on Strike To Protest Climate Change
It started 29 weeks ago when 16-year-old Swede Greta Thunberg began skipping school on Fridays to protest climate change by standing outside of her nation's parliament building. Today, kids from more than 110 countries, including the United States, are following Thunberg's lead and will play hooky from classes for something they think is ultimately more important: preventing the warming of their planet. Live updates, from The Guardian. Further reading: Thousands of scientists are backing the kids striking for climate change.
Time to stop creating climate policies based on the personal opinions of old people with only a few more years to live.
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It doesn't take much to get a kid to decide not to go to school. But are they willing to make real sacrifices for the environment? Probably not. You have to give up meat. You can't buy electronics devices. You can't use plastics. Can't drink milk or consume many other animal products unless they are expensive sustainable varieties. You have to give up on shopping at the mall and do all your clothes shopping at thrift stores buying only highly durable clothing that lasts more than a season. Give up any sports or extracurriculars that require you to travel by bus.
When kids do those things, they will be standing on firm moral ground.
Yeah sure because every gods-be-damned thing has to be about DEMOCRATS and REPUBLICANS and nothing else matters. Who cares about anything that's going to happen 100 years from now? Only what happens the next election, or the next fiscal year, or the next gods-be-damned news cycle has any relevance whatsoever to anyone anywhere.
Go see your optometrist, myopian; apparently your prescription is so out-of-date that you can't see past your own nose anymore.
Missing 20% of your school days doesn't seem like a good way to achieving their goals. If you don't have a good education, how do you expect to be able to effect positive change in the world? Fixing things takes more than good intentions.
Kids aren't doing this because they genuinely give a damn about Climate Change.
They're doing it because it's a convenient excuse to get out of school.
Fail those who exceed the maximum number of days they can miss in a School Year.
Once you introduce consequences into the equation, you'll figure out who is serious and who isn't.
( Those who are willing to watch their friends move on to the next grade level while they repeat it are the serious ones )
Adult lesson of the day:
It isn't much of a strike / protest unless you risk something in return.
Who's coordinating this behind the scenes? Who are the adults in charge of this? "Get a free day off school if you just go with our political program" is too good to be true. Our investigative journalists are asleep at the wheel. This is big, very big. There's a Pulitzer Prize waiting for the one who busts this open.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Who cares about anything that's going to happen 100 years from now? Only what happens the next election,
100 years from now? The world's going to end in 20 years! Or so I hear every few years. Nuclear war between the US and Russia was a real threat to all humanity. Everything panic after is at most "meh".
But. yeah, the Dems and GOP are both almost-entirely owned by the .01%. They only actually disagree about things that don't matter to the economy. Everything else is for show (e.g., Republicans crossing the aisle to stop the wall being built - can't let the economy be affected by that pesky democracy!).
I'm not sure we can vote our way out of problems with economic consequences any more in America. Pity.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Manipulating kids on a global scale to push a political interest while pretending it's grass-roots and then reporting it that way in the news.
It's time we call this what it is every time we see it. It's all about consolidated control.
The people in charge of these movements don't give a rats ass about the environment, in fact they intentionally trigger and prolong real environmental disasters to justify more regulation. That's why the BP disaster in the gulf took so long to plug and rivers in Indian reservations were intentionally polluted by the EPA.
They have to make each of us feel guilty in an individual basis too push their agenda. That's why stuff like this news article gets published.
You want to really clean up the environment on a personal basis? Bring back deposit bottles, less manufacturing overhead and it gives kids and homeless something to make some money with. Stop the single use craze by buying in bulk and from farmers markets. Intentionally but things with less packaging.
Want to address the larger scale? Legalize newer nuclear reactors that are less dangerous, like pebble bed reactors. Recycle the existing spent full no matter how Jimmy Carter feels about it. Get the ethanol out of our has engines. Start making Sterling Engines that run in ethanol to keep the corn lobby happy and to fuel local backup power and even supplement the grid. Use it to purify water while you're at it.
This is propaganda people, recognize it, shine a light on it.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
I'm just thinking how envious we should be that a kid found a way to play hooky that has the publicity and backing to keep them out of detention.
Wish I'd thought of this when I was in high school (the assholes in charge would never have let it fly though!)
Huh?
Standing outside parliament all day long would be a dream day off school for you.
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Half the arguments these days tend to go something like:
Employee: "I'm taking Fridays off to protest global warming!"
Boss: "How is that related to global warming?"
Employee: "I can't believe you'd say something so racist!?!?!"
Boss: "That had nothing to do with racism, and if you don't come in Friday you won't get paid."
Employee: "How could you try to deny my existence!?"
I'm not going to deny that global warming exists, but to speak bluntly: it doesn't much matter if we dump X amount of CO2 into the atmosphere in 100 years or 8000 years. On a global/geologic timescale they are approximately equal. Regardless of how fast we do it, every single fossil fuel on this planet will be used up and burned. All we can really do is cross our fingers and hope that however much CO2 that happens to be isn't so much that it kills everyone.
If it's below that threshold, then we'll eventually create renewable energy sources out of necessity - essentially that will be our way of evolving through this change. If it's not, then whatever does survive will evolve to live in whatever new climate the planet settles into.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain