Climate strikes are what we need
On Friday, Sept. 24, thousands took to the streets in New York City to demand climate justice to combat the increasingly intense and apparent threat of climate change. The strike was organized by the New York City branch of Fridays for Future, a youth-led global movement inspired by climate activist Greta Thunberg’s School Strike for Climate held in 2018.
This strike’s purpose served not only to push back against corporate and government inaction, but also to protest the disproportionate effects of climate change on BIPOC communities.
The strike reached its peak when participants convened in Battery Park after having marched from City Hall, and young speakers of various backgrounds shared their experiences with climate change and their propositions to prevent it. The heartfelt and impassioned words of these youth leaders emphasized why we should put a concerted effort toward restoring the planet. Their rhetoric expanded beyond the simple statements of global warming and pollution’s harmful effects.
Fourteen-year-old climate and animal rights activist Genesis Butler spoke on the extreme yet underdiscussed damage caused by industrial animal agriculture. Seventy percent of deforestation in the Amazon is a result of cattle ranching, destroying thousands of homes for residents. This industry is so harmful that even if all other sources of carbon emissions were completely cut off, the global climate would still increase.
Students for a Free Tibet leader Tsela Zogsang brought attention to the climate crisis in Tibet. Under the occupation of China, Tibet is being destroyed by harmful mining practices and state infrastructure projects, risking the crucial supply chains of many countries that rely on Tibet for fresh water. The damage has caused the region to warm three times faster than its natural rate and risks the loss of at least two-thirds of the Himalayan glaciers. The Chinese government has hidden this devastating environmental blow from the public eye outside of Tibet.
Other topics discussed included the demolition of minority neighborhoods to expand infrastructure, the billions of our tax dollars going into the fossil fuel industry, climate change’s disproportionate effect on Black and Indigenous people and the deliberate ignorance of politicians who continue to support and profit from environmentally harmful industries.
For years, climate change has been an undeniable threat to our livelihood. This strike has only made it more evident. The scope of what most people know about climate change extends only to what is presented in the media.
There are numerous climate crises all over the world that are left uncovered – or deliberately hidden – which leave the planet ravaged to an unimaginable degree.
What many people don’t know is that climate change is just as much of a social justice issue as an environmental one. Lower-class minorities are the first to be evicted from their homes to make room for infrastructure projects, and the first ones to experience devastation from climate-induced natural disasters.
It is imperative that facts discussed at the climate strike are more widely taught so that people understand the full extent of the climate crisis and are roused to join in the fight. It is only in unity and assembly that there is any hope of reducing the detrimental impacts of climate change.
