Resources from the Climate Pledge Collective
What you need to know a GoogleDoc from the international Fridays For Future group
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/mar/01/youth-climate-change-strikers-open-letter-to-world-leaders
Letter from global coordinators of youth-led climate strike
Here are a collection of useful links for Students, Parents and Teachers for learning more about the situation::
https://www.commonsense.org/education/top-picks/climate-change-resources-for-students-and-teachers
This website also has some useful information https://kidsagainstclimatechange.co/start-learning/
SOME PLACARD SLOGANS TO INSPIRE YOUR OWN:
The greatest threat to our planet is the belief that someone else will save it The oceans are rising and so are we
Global warming is so HOT right now
The climate is changing – why aren’t we?
One Planet, One People, One Future
Teach them well and let them lead the way…
I’m sure the dinosaurs thought they had time too
We stand with Greta
Denial is not a policy
Why should we go to school if you won’t listen to the educated?
The youth of today must have a say
Too young to vote, but not too young to burn?
The planet is hotter than my boyfriend
SEX. Now I’ve got your attention, let’s talk about climate
Make (heart) Not CO2
COAL IS KILLING US
ESKOM MUST FALL
We can’t drink OIL, we can’t breathe MONEY
Stop playing politics with our future!
For parents/teachers:
I need to be able to tell my children I did not stay silent
CLIMATE STRIKE facts to help write a school assembly speech:
The last 5 years have been the hottest on record. Greenhouse gas emissions since the Industrial Revolution have already raised the temperature of the earth by 1˚C. Now that might not seem like a significant increase, but to put it in context, only 9˚C separates the modern world from the last ice age.
Africa as a whole contributes only 3.8% of the world’s emissions, but will bear the brunt of climate change. Extreme weather events as a result of global warming increases the risk of drought in southern Africa and floods in east Africa.
Across central Africa, the rainy season used to be reliable as clockwork, but now it rains any time and much more heavily than before. Or else it doesn’t rain at all. Cape Town has had a taste of this with ‘Day Zero’.
In the last few months there have been wild fires in Tasmania and California and extreme heat and floods in Australia. The ice sheets covering Antartica are melting at an alarming rate. These are direct results of global warming.
The giant oil, gas and coal mining corporations cause over 70% of global warming. They make such huge profits, they can afford to spend millions of dollars annually lobbying governments to turn a blind eye to their pollution. We have to acknowledge our addiction to fossil fuels and stop the dealers killing us.
If the human race carries on spewing carbon and methane into the atmosphere at this rate, the International Panel on Climate Change report of October 2018 states we will hit 2˚C around 2030, unleashing a potentially catastrophic climate experiment.
So we have 11 years left to save the world.
You know all those scary disaster movies where the signs are there but everyone is ignoring them apart from the one maverick guy with the passion to point them out?
She has arrived. Her name is Greta Thunberg. Have you heard of her?
Yep, the only person talking sense in the world right now is a teenage girl from Sweden whose autistic gift allows her to blank out the babble of glittery nonsense surrounding us and demand attention for the only facts that matter:
Our house is on fire.
There is no more time.
We have to act now.
In August last year, Greta Thunberg took Friday off school and went to sit on her own outside the Swedish Parliament building with a sign that said “School Strike for Climate”. She’s done it 28 times since. In those seven months, tens of thousands of school children have joined her. Across Australia and Europe – in Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands and in UK – kids have taken to the streets to demand the politicians pull their heads out of the sand and do something.
Greta was 15 years old when this started. She’s small with long plaits, she’s got Asperger’s Syndrome and she’s talking in her second language. But she hasn’t let any of that stop her telling truth to power.
Greta has done a brilliant TED talk. You could also check out her speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland earlier this year when she called out the super rich people running the multinational corporations. She spent 65 hours on trains getting there, while they flew in on private jets – all 1500 of them.
Climate change is doing such harm to the ecology of the planet that currently insect and wildlife species are being wiped out at the rate of more than 200 per day. If we carry on pretending this isn’t happening, humanity may be the first species to enable our own extinction.
We have allowed our parents and our grandparents’ generations to ignore the wisdom of our scientists, the warnings of our activists, the greed of our corporations and the cowardice of our politicians for long enough.
This isn’t just about saving the polar bears anymore, it’s about saving ourselves.
In 1976, South African youth in Soweto led a protest against a blinkered, self-interested government to insist on the survival of their own languages. They changed the course of history. In 2019 we are stepping up to insist on the survival of our generation.
Cape Town has called a School Strike for Friday 15th March from 12 noon outside Parliament. You don’t need to miss any school because we break up at 11am as it is the last day of term. Everyone who cares will be there, will you?
THANKS TO RUBY SAMPSON FROM WYNBERG
Some problems explained
● Short article: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-47203344
● Long article: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/feb/12/climate-and-economic-risks-threaten-2008-style-systemic-collapse
● News:https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/feb/13/academics-back-uk-schools-climate-change-strikes
● Video series: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJ8cMiYb3G5fP5oq01TBp9fgh70vDDSMe
Some solutions explained
● Short video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOIdYKWyZ88
● Long video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ko_TMlq40vg
● Long article: https://phys.org/news/2019-02-climate_1.html
● Academic view: http://www.theindependentbd.com/post/187137
● Video + short article: https://edition.cnn.com/2019/01/15/health/climate-change-phase-out-infrastructure-study/index.html
● News: https://www.news24.com/Green/News/fixing-the-environment-when-solutions-become-problems-20190114
Some stakeholders explained
● Long article:
https://cosmosmagazine.com/climate/the-most-villainous-act-in-the-history-of-human-civilisation-tyler-prize-winner-michael-e-mann-speaks-out
● News: https://phys.org/news/2018-11-climate-scientists-wrong.html
● Academic: https://thebestschools.org/features/top-climate-change-scientists/
● Long article & pictures:
https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/climate-refugee/
● Short video:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-15/a-tiny-island-prepares-the-world-for-a-climate-refugee-crisis
● Long article:
https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/09/01/the-green-radicals-are-coming-environmental-extremism/
THANKS TO NICHOLAS FORD FROM RONDEBOSCH