Friday, September 23, 2022



Still striking for a future

In 2017, Labour leader Jacinda Ardern said that climate change was "my generation's nuclear-free moment" and promised action. In 2019 and 2021 school students walked out of classrooms to demand she deliver. And today, they walked out again, because she still hasn't.

The strikes are smaller today, because the movement has lost momentum due to covid. But everyone should be supporting them. The students' basic demand for a liveable future isn't just about their future, but ours as well. We're already experiencing the leading edge of the burning apocalyptic hellscape our elders have left us, and if you're under 80 you can expect to experience it getting worse and worse and worse. On top of the drumbeat of cyclones, droughts and floods, We've already seen megafires in Australia and the US, and megafloods in Pakistan. we haven't yet had out first city-scale wet-bulb event, but we all know its only a matter of time. Unless we stop it. Unless we make our governments stop it, with policy to quickly eliminate fossil fuels, decarbonise the economy, and remediate the damage that has already been done.

This demand for a liveable future is both just and achievable. We have the technology and the knowledge to get there. What stands in our way is a handful of billionaires, who would rather burn the earth than let things change. Our job is to make our governments work for us and not them. Protest is part of that. And if the government refuses to listen, and continues to support the destructive status quo, we should vote them out on their arses and get another one which will.