Students and young people around the world led the Global Youth Climate Strike on July 20th of this year. While a robust climate activist movement has existed for many years, the extreme, dangerous circumstances of climate change and the obvious ties to an inequitable and extractive economy continue.
Jane Paul, Head of the Undergraduate Studies Concentration Urban Studies as well as Teaching (and founding) Faculty in the Masters in Urban Sustainability program, published an article “The House Is on Fire, and So Are We”
in the September/October issue of Dollars & Sense: Real World Economics.
“We don’t have a lack of solutions, but rather we have a lack of will amongst the global powers, including and very overtly the current US government, to tamp profit-driven economic growth,” said Paul. “This constant growth is not making us stronger; in fact, it is an illness that spreads inequity, diminishes rights and exacerbates destructive environmental consequences.”
In the face of extraordinary suppression and disrespect, young people from countries across the globe spoke out, to express that they not only personally feel the vicious impacts of climate change but that also they feel a sense of responsibility to make a significant and immediate change.
“It is a call to us all, in every generation, nationality, and class, to stand by their sides, to lift up their voices and to shift the landscape of power,” added Paul. “The Global Climate Strike was one day – a single day that marks the beginning of a new era of action and hopefulness.”
