Pictured below are students protesting outside Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office in San Francisco, California. Both Pelosi and her fellow Democratic lawmaker, US Senator Diane Feinstein, have been criticized by climate change protesters.
Angelika S is a 14-year-old activist from Oakland, California. She shared with the Guardian why these protests are important to her.
When I learned about climate change through the internet, it terrified me. This made me feel helpless and hopeless. This fear was kept in the back of my head until I was introduced to Warriors for Justice, a student-led club and No Coal in Oakland, which was a campaign opposing to a developer named Phil Tagami who’s building a coal terminal in West Oakland. This brought me relief because I was working for a cause and trying my best to create a change.
Students stand outside the office of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi during a protest against climate change Friday, in San Francisco. Friday’s rallies were one of the biggest international climate change actions yet, involving hundreds of thousands of students in more than 100 countries around the globe. Photograph: Ben Margot/AP
But this was the start of our battle. Climate change is real. Have you seen it snow in Hawaii and Los Angeles, places that are known to be hot? It’s so abnormal! Have you seen the wildfires from last year? We had to wear to wear masks to even step foot outside of our home because on how toxic the air was. This is the reality we’re living in.
Imagine the future for you, for me, the youth, your kids, your grandkids, and the animals roaming now. What will happen to all of them? Will they live up to the age of 30, without wearing a mask to go outside?
This is why we need to fight together, it’s not but for the youth but for our home, earth. This strike is to help stop climate change from turning into something disastrous – it’s not too late turn back. We’re asking for renewable energy and to stop using fossil fuels for daily needs. We must cooperate to save this earth, to have a future.
US Democratic presidential candidate and Senator from New York Kirsten Gillibrand “happened across” the local Youth Climate March while she was in Portsmouth, New Hampshire this morning.
While in Portsmouth, NH this morning, we happened across the local #YouthClimateStrike. One of the organizers was nice enough to invite me to speak.
I'm so proud of the young activists leading the fight for climate action, speaking truth to power. I've got your back. pic.twitter.com/9rswLErSYo
“Why not – as Americans today – say we are going to have a green economy in the next 10 years? Not because it’s easy, but because it’s hard, as a measure of who we are, how great we are, our innovation, our excellence, our extraordinary ability to solve big problems. Why wouldn’t you try?
For those who say you can’t possible get to net zero emissions in 10 years, well you know what – John F Kennedy didn’t know he could put a man on the moon, but he tried.
Just wanted to take a moment to share reader contributions we’ve received from all over the world.
Students in South East Junior High School in Iowa City, Iowa – in America’s corn belt – are protesting because “more than 60% of the energy for our school buildings is generated from coal-fired plants.” They called on school leaders to request bids for solar projects at their schools.
Inspired by youth climate protesters, the United Nation’s Secretary General António Guterres writes for the Guardian that he will call a UN summit on the issue.
Scores of young people, including many students staging a walkout from school, attend the Philly Youth Climate Strike in Philadelphia’s Love Park in solidarity with dozens of similar marches around the world, March 15, 2019. Their concerns include unchecked pollution and other environmental risk factors they feel are not being adequately addressed by adults in government and society. Photograph: Michael Candelori/REX/Shutterstock
Tens of thousands of young people took to the streets on Friday with a clear message to world leaders: act now to save our planet and our future from the climate emergency.
These schoolchildren have grasped something that seems to elude many of their elders: we are in a race for our lives, and we are losing. The window of opportunity is closing – we no longer have the luxury of time, and climate delay is almost as dangerous as climate denial.
My generation has failed to respond properly to the dramatic challenge of climate change. This is deeply felt by young people. No wonder they are angry...
That is why I am bringing world leaders together at a climate action summit later this year. I am calling on all leaders to come to New York in September with concrete, realistic plans to enhance their nationally determined contributions by 2020, in line with reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 45% over the next decade, and to net zero by 2050.
Representative Ilhan Omar’s daughter, 16-year-old Isra Hirsi, took some time to speak with my colleague Adrian Horton. Here’s what she told us about the Youth Climate Strikes:
Climate strikes are happening all over the world, but I’m helping organize the one across the United States. I was contacted by one of the other co-founders, Haven Coleman, and she asked me if I wanted to help lead my state via Instagram DM... I got involved with them in late January and we’ve just been pulling state leads and talking to people ever since.”
What are you hoping comes out of the strike?
I’m hoping a lot of things. I just want that awareness and education — I want people to understand the intense emergency of climate change, and that young people aren’t really going to be backing down. And also I want folks to feel...threatened enough to take climate action.”
Why now?
It’s now or never, you know? I don’t the specifics on why March 15th was chosen, but I do know that according to the IFCC report, we have about 11 years...and so we really have to act now, or we won’t have a future tomorrow.
What does the climate strike mean to your hometown of Minneapolis, Minnesota?
We have really intense air pollution, especially north Minneapolis, we have a whole bunch of factories up there. And also in my home state we have a pipeline being built, Line 3, and it goes straight through indigenous greenland and wild rice beds. That pipeline isn’t going to just effect my state or my hometown, but it’s going to effect the entire country. So that’s tons and tons of oil being pumped into our ground; oil spills are a lot more prominent when they start drilling. [There’s also] things like the polar vortex, having extreme weather conditions in Minnesota.”
How are you balancing this with schoolwork and being a teenager?
Balancing is one of the hardest things. I’ve just been trying to go as fast as possible. I spend some days...over the weekend, I canceled calls for a while just so I could focus on homework. The end of the quarter for me is in about two weeks, so after March 15 it’s kind of go-time to quickly catch up before the end of the quarter. I’ve just been communicating with my parents and my teachers as much as possible, letting them know. They’re all aware.”
What’s an average day like in terms of planning?
I go to school, and then I answer emails throughout the day. And then I head over to my house. I have calls planned from about 4pm to 10pm, and I’ll be answering emails, and some time in there eat dinner and do homework.”
What do you hope the takeaway is for people, especially youth, not involved in the strike?
I would say that it’s your life too, in that climate change effects all of us. In that you can stay apathetic all you want, but as it gets worse and worse, it’s going to get worse and worse for you, too. It’s in the hands of all of us to take action.”
US Congresswoman – and her daughter – speak to activists
US Representative Ilhan Omar is speaking now at the climate strike in Washington DC. Her 16-year-old daughter, Isra Omar, helped organize the protests.
Omar is part of a wave of Democratic lawmakers who came into office in the midterm elections. She has proven to be a polarizing representative, but also an inspiring one for many young people who support the Green New Deal.
She told young protesters American’s should not, “prioritize corporate interests over the health of all our communities.”
I’m answering that demand Secretary, and will be standing with them at tomorrow’s march! I hope our country and congress will answer their demand as well. https://t.co/Qqtkrw6W2D
“Yes, we are at a dark moment in our history, but we are the light that can bring change,” she said. Americans “must bear” responsibility for climate change because of the large share of carbon dioxide the west emits into the atmosphere.
“We must end the extraction of the dirtiest fossil fuel in the world and keep it in the ground,” she said.
From my colleague Adrian Horton, here’s an interview with Marcela Mulholland, a 21-year-old student organizer at University of Florida in Gainesville, where students are striking. They will join student activists from a local high school, who will protest in front of city hall.
Marcela Mulholland, 21, stands outside the Civic Media Center in Gainesville, Florida on February 25, 2019. Mulholland is part of the Sunrise Movement, a grassroots organization that advocates for climate change policy. Photograph: Charlotte Kesl/The Guardian
It’s been really cool to work in conjunction with high schoolers and college students on this issue — it really speaks to how this is a generational issue. It’s going to effect young people the most, because we have to grow up on this planet. So yeah, there’s the strike happening during the day on University of Florida campus and then in the afternoon, there is one happening with high schoolers, college students and the Gainesville community at large.”
Why now? Why March 2019?
So a few months ago, the United Nations intergovernmental panel on climate change released a report that essentially sounded the alarm — they released it in 2018 and they said we had 12 years but now we have 11 years to drastically cut our greenhouse gas emissions if we want to avoid the most catastrophic global warming.
When that report came out – for me personally – I already believed in climate change and was very involved in the climate movement, but it was still a punch in the gut. To just see it in writing yet again, reiterated by the world’s leading climate scientists that we really are spiraling toward a catastrophic future that could end civilization as we know it if we don’t act within the next few years, that really for me... made me double down on my commitment to this movement.
What does this strike mean to your hometown?
I was born and raised in south Florida, and when I was in high school my family moved to Fort Lauderdale, which is a coastal community. We lived in an apartment building that was just two blocks away from the beach. When I was living there, I didn’t really know about global climate change, or sea level rise, or these kind of technical terms. I just knew that dealing with hurricanes was a regular part of my experience growing up.
I also started to notice that these weird things would happen, like the street in front of my house would flood when there were storms or even sometimes when it wasn’t raining. It’s interesting, because the people who lived in this community that’s going to be directly impacted by climate change, I don’t feel like we talked about it very much. We all just adapted to the circumstances — local businesses would have to put up sandbags, and people were becoming experts on the tidal patterns because it effected their everyday lives...and then I went to college and learned about climate change and saw my personal experiences in this global context. And then Trump was elected, which was a radicalizing experience, and here I am.”
What this strike and what this movement more broadly means for my hometown is that it gives us a sense of hope, that we don’t actually have to be facing 6-8 feet of flooding by the end of the century, that there are people who care about my community’s well-being and other community’s like mine, and [who] value our needs and our well-being over the interests of corporate polluters and fossil fuel billionaires and CEOs who have bought out our politicians. And so much of our communities on the front line of this crisis need is more renewable energy and a Green New Deal, but what we really need in more of a spiritual sense is hope, and this strike really provides that.”
Anything else you want people to know or wish I had asked?
If there are any young people who are reading this and also feel very overwhelmed and very sad about the trajectory that our planet is on right now, I would encourage them to choose to get involved with the climate movement because I have found that there’s no better way to find hope and meaning in this trying time than working alongside fellow people who share my grief for the world, and I would love to be in the movement along side them.”
Once more from Washington DC, Guardian US climate reporter Emily Holden reports as students prepare for a 12pm ET rally, students are trickling in “from all directions”, to join the roughly 250 already present.
There was also a sweet moment while she was there – a 14-year-old girl celebrated her birthday at the Youth Climate Strikes. She said some of her teachers didn’t want her to be absent from class, but she felt the strike was too critical to miss.
“This is really important here because some of the most important people make the decisions here, and we really need influence them,” said Lili Moresi, 14, from Maryland.
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