Friday, Sept. 20 marked the start date of a global rally that took place to protest the lack of action concerning climate change. The strike lasted one full week and involved over 100 countries. Those who participated in the rally were fighting for the mining of fossil fuels to come to a halt and to, instead, replace it with 100 percent clean energy.
On our own campus, we had members of the Citizens’ Climate Lobby Executive Board on the Quad asking for signatures to implement a Sustainability Coordinator at Bloomsburg University. The duties of a person in this position include coming up with environmental programs to reduce damage to the planet and help Bloomsburg make the transition to a green campus.
It is reported that over 500 students have signed the petition and the Executive Board is determined to double that number by next week.
The global climate strike was led entirely by young people who demanded to be heard. In just schools alone, it is estimated that 1.4 million students around the word participated with that number climbing as high as four million in total. This is a huge number of people showing their concern about their politicians ignoring climate change and being bold enough to do something about it.
At the rally, people took to the streets on every continent in the world, holding clever signs that got their points across. Some signs read: “There is no planet B; Denial is not a policy; Our voices must rise so sea levels don’t.” Some others took a more comedic standpoint: “It’s getting hot in here, so take off all your coal; Don’t treat Earth like Uranus; Don’t be a fossil fool.”
Three days after the strike, the UN Climate Summit took place. At the summit it was said that in order to cap global warming, we would have to cut our greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030. This seems unlikely as the top three contributors of greenhouse gas emissions, China, United States and India, have not yet stated what they are going to do to change their climate policies.