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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.
Instead, let's base policy on the personal opinion of kids who only believe what they heard somewhere? Sounds reasonable.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
3 day weekends in the name of justice!
Hmmmm..... I may need to implement this policy for myself....
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
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Go see your optometrist, myopian; apparently your prescription is so out-of-date that you can't see past your own nose anymore.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.
I like to get my science from papers and reports, not emotion-provoking film documentaries. If you actually want to understand climate change, start here (warning: pdf).
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
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.
What are you afraid of, economic catastrophe?
Yes. I am afraid of economic catastrophe and you should be too. If you think that is something not to be afraid of speaks volumes. Everything is secondary when the economy is crashing down and people are unemployed. Every high ideal you can think of will be put on hold and forgotten when people are feeling economic pain.
Cheap energy has helped poor people. Nearly every solution I have seen to climate change will in some way increase the cost of energy which will be mostly felt by the poor. That is not a good solution for the poor. Would you care about what happens in 100 years if you go to bed hungry every night? It reminds me of conservation biology. Using endangered species for food is like burning the Mona Lisa for warmth. It's tragic but anyone would do it if they had to feed a family.
Please do not disregard economic concerns because you are affluent and extrapolate what you can personally afford with what others can afford. Taxes are not the fix all to every problem and raising taxes can backfire. Every solution must have an economic understanding.
Carbon consumption and sprawl went down in the last recession. States started looking at their criminal justice and drug policies and examining the costs of mass incarceration. The economic stimulus program started funding transit projects like electric trains and light rail. Manufacturers started putting out smaller cars (sadly, the US is back on the fucking SUV wagon now), and electric cars started taking off. Recession = reform.
Policies that limit pollution. What are you afraid of, economic catastrophe? Mommy telling you what to do?
My college roommate was an environmental engineer. The actual tenet of the field is: "there is no such thing as too little pollution, but there is such a thing as too little production".
Something to consider. If it's free of hard tradeoffs, it's not engineering.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Yeah, economic catastrophe... like 2008? You don't *like* lots of new jobs being created in renewable energy... as opposed to, say, coal[1]?
And what do you think the economy's going to do, when bad weather screws the US heartland, and there are worldwide food shortages[2]?
Or maybe those climate changes, like overuse of water and drought are some of what's causing conflict around the globe, and mass migration?[3]
Gee, think of all the folks who'll lose their job in the buggy whip factories.
1. 1972, the coal industry employed about 780,000 miners; coal output rose until about 15 years ago... but employs about 78,000 as of 5-10 years ago, due to strip mining and mountaintop removal.
2. I don't suppose you know about the food riots in Mexico and Central America, when too much of US corn production was diverted to ethanol, and there were shortages for bread and tortillas.
3. Do you have any clue about how major subsurface water, in the Central Valley of California, in the midwest, are being played out, not refilling, because of current weather, location, and agribusiness techniques?
Why not start somewhere? Nuclear and renewables are existing technology. Building more of them is an engineering problem. More doing, less talking.
This is about climate change, not about pollution.
Anonymous Coward, the definition of pollution is "the presence in or introduction into the environment of a substance or thing that has harmful or poisonous effects."
So yes, dumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere is pollution.
Yes. I am afraid of economic catastrophe
Then why not do something about climate change? The economic catastrophe that climate change with wreak upon the earth is unfathomable.
I have some friends who joined this protest. The kid quoted in the article said, "my life is literally on the line." It's not
Their physical life may not be on the line but the potential quality of their future life definitely is.
They don't want to spend their lives dealing with the consequences of the current policies.
No sig today...
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.
No sig today...
Because he'll be dead by then, duh. Today's climate obstructionists are simply putting the pain of taking action onto future generations, multiplied many times over by the delay.
They're basically stealing shit from the future, in a very inefficient but cheap way, for their own personal gain.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
But we don't have scientific consensus that the cost of mitigating it today is lower than the cost of dealing with it in the future. From an economic and human prosperity standpoint it's entirely possible that doing nothing today is the best course of action because it lifts the most people out of poverty and advancing technology will allow us to live in a warmer global climate more comfortably than we live today.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
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
So your plan is to promise to pay people for their work and then stiff them in the future? That sure sounds like a great way to save humanity... Debt isn't made up, it's owed to somebody. It's not just on a computer screen. If that's all debt is and it can be canceled out with no consequences, I hope you have a lot of physical resources at home because all your savings and assets are just numbers on a computer screen too.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
Do you contribute to a retirement account? Why do you do it if past performance is no guarantee of future results?
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
The whole point of reducing greenhouse gases emissions is that it is cheaper than the consequences of not doing it. Which will, by the way, affect the poor.
The real poor (as in under developed countries) use very little energy by the way. It's us, the rich (and you don't need to be that rich as long as you live in a rich country), with heated + air conditioned homes, hot water, green lawn, driving 20+ km to work in alone in their SUV and flying for vacations who do.