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Kids From At Least 112 Countries, Including the US, Go on Strike To Protest Climate Change 339

Posted by msmash from the better-future dept.
It started 29 weeks ago when 16-year-old Swede Greta Thunberg began skipping school on Fridays to protest climate change by standing outside of her nation's parliament building. Today, kids from more than 110 countries, including the United States, are following Thunberg's lead and will play hooky from classes for something they think is ultimately more important: preventing the warming of their planet. Live updates, from The Guardian. Further reading: Thousands of scientists are backing the kids striking for climate change.
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Kids From At Least 112 Countries, Including the US, Go on Strike To Protest Climate Change More

Kids From At Least 112 Countries, Including the US, Go on Strike To Protest Climate Change

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  • Hell, yes! (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Joce640k ( 829181 )

    Time to stop creating climate policies based on the personal opinions of old people with only a few more years to live.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by phantomfive ( 622387 )
      Instead, let's base policy on the personal opinion of kids who only believe what they heard somewhere? Sounds reasonable.

      • Screw that... (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward

        I'm just thinking how envious we should be that a kid found a way to play hooky that has the publicity and backing to keep them out of detention.

        Wish I'd thought of this when I was in high school (the assholes in charge would never have let it fly though!)

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Rick Schumann ( 4662797 )
        Go watch this: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/... [pbs.org] then go ahead and tell us all about how global climate change and the human role in it is just bullshit. Rhetorical on my part of course you Dominionist types are practically begging for the End Of The World anyway, and anything you can do to hurry that along is all to the good so far as you're concerned.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by alvinrod ( 889928 )
        Let’s see if the kids will give up the conveniences in their lives that are necessitated by what they propose. Skipping out of school is viewed as a perk as far as kids go (I don’t suspect that today’s youth are any different from my generation) so right now I don’t place much value on their actions. It’s similar to the Kony 2012 slacktivism that’s easy to subscribe to because it carries no personal cost. I wonder how many would start walking to school instead of driving,

        • Yep. Standing outside parliament all day long is every schoolkid's dream day off.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by whitroth ( 9367 )

          So, would you say the same of my generation, when we were teens... who were out in the streets protesting 'Nam and the draft?

          Or the kids a bit older than me, who literally risked their lives to protest in the South for voting and other civil rights?

          Go back to watching sportsball, and stay off the 'Net.

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by JaredOfEuropa ( 526365 )
        You mean, based on kids going on strike because their schools are forcing them to? A bunch of schools in Belgium have turned these protests into an extracurricular activity, with mandatory attendance. I kid you not [standaard.be] (in Dutch)

        Something similar happened in the Netherlands when schools allowed children to attend. One of the school's principals was interviewed, and stated that it's good to encourage children to demonstrate and voice their opinion in this manner. Then, in an unbelievably rare case of a jo

  • Go to school, kids. If you want to protest, do it in more productive ways--like cornering Diane Feinstein and asking her why she hates puppies.

    • Re:Fat drunk and stupid is no way to go through li (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Rick Schumann ( 4662797 ) on Friday March 15, 2019 @10:47AM (#58278504) Journal
      Yeah sure because every gods-be-damned thing has to be about DEMOCRATS and REPUBLICANS and nothing else matters. Who cares about anything that's going to happen 100 years from now? Only what happens the next election, or the next fiscal year, or the next gods-be-damned news cycle has any relevance whatsoever to anyone anywhere.

      Go see your optometrist, myopian; apparently your prescription is so out-of-date that you can't see past your own nose anymore.
      • Who KNOWS for sure what's going to happen in 100 years? I've listened to too many sky-is-falling proclamations from scientists and politicians alike in the last 30 years. I have no faith that they can predict that far in advance. In fact, according to 10+ years ago we only had 10 years to fix things or we're done for. When they quit flying to their "climate change conferences", when they start practicing what they preach, until they come up with solutions other than "Give me money" "Give me power" then I

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by lgw ( 121541 )

        Who cares about anything that's going to happen 100 years from now? Only what happens the next election,

        100 years from now? The world's going to end in 20 years! Or so I hear every few years. Nuclear war between the US and Russia was a real threat to all humanity. Everything panic after is at most "meh".

        But. yeah, the Dems and GOP are both almost-entirely owned by the .01%. They only actually disagree about things that don't matter to the economy. Everything else is for show (e.g., Republicans crossing the aisle to stop the wall being built - can't let the economy be affected by that pesky democracy!).

        I

  • School administrations are not going to get in the way of the cause du jour. The ensuing recreational outrage will not be worth it.

  • Fridays off (Score:5, Funny)

    by The-Ixian ( 168184 ) on Friday March 15, 2019 @10:37AM (#58278410)

    3 day weekends in the name of justice!

    Hmmmm..... I may need to implement this policy for myself....

  • Are those kids willing to sacrifice something? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by reanjr ( 588767 ) on Friday March 15, 2019 @10:37AM (#58278420) Homepage

    It doesn't take much to get a kid to decide not to go to school. But are they willing to make real sacrifices for the environment? Probably not. You have to give up meat. You can't buy electronics devices. You can't use plastics. Can't drink milk or consume many other animal products unless they are expensive sustainable varieties. You have to give up on shopping at the mall and do all your clothes shopping at thrift stores buying only highly durable clothing that lasts more than a season. Give up any sports or extracurriculars that require you to travel by bus.

    When kids do those things, they will be standing on firm moral ground.

    • Re:Are those kids willing to sacrifice something? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by magzteel ( 5013587 ) on Friday March 15, 2019 @10:40AM (#58278460)

      It doesn't take much to get a kid to decide not to go to school. But are they willing to make real sacrifices for the environment? Probably not. You have to give up meat. You can't buy electronics devices. You can't use plastics. Can't drink milk or consume many other animal products unless they are expensive sustainable varieties. You have to give up on shopping at the mall and do all your clothes shopping at thrift stores buying only highly durable clothing that lasts more than a season. Give up any sports or extracurriculars that require you to travel by bus.

      When kids do those things, they will be standing on firm moral ground.

      I've had similar conversations with my kids. They are just as willing to give up their conveniences as wealthy people are willing to give up the private jets they use to get to the next climate junket.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Kohath ( 38547 )

      They'll sacrifice you and your lifestyle, as long as they get to keep theirs.

      • Bingo. Substitute socialists for kids and you still have a true statement. Citation: Daughter of chavez, one of the wealthiest females in the world much less just Venezuela, A. Occasionally Coherent (example: DON'T EAT HAMBURGERS, while one of her organization's big-wigs is eating one right across from her). Ask google or The Duck, there's plenty of other examples.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by lgw ( 121541 )

          Substitute socialists for kids and you still have a true statement.

          Most kids are socialists, and rightly so: they've only lived in a way where an authority provides for their every need. Socialism is the only thing they've known. And that's fine, but eventually one should grow up.

          A. Occasionally Coherent

          That's pronounced "occasional cortex".

    • That's stupid. Look, if everyone else is willing to join me in doing things to prevent global warming, I am too. But I'm not going to deprive myself if the world is on fire anyway. See also, I'm willing to pay higher taxes, but only if everyone else does.

    • We'd all be healthier if we ate meat once a day, only a few times a week. Electronic devices are actually quite green, provided they're durable and designed to be repaired. A laptop or phone can access more than a million times its own weight in books. Yeah: clothing should last more than a year -- that's the way it was done until the "fast fashion" stupidity of the 2000s. School bus travel is actually pretty green. A school bus gets about 4 mpg. Times 50 students, that's about 200 mpg. It's helichop

    • You have to give up meat.

      And vegetables too. Not just palm oil, I mean, huge swaths of land once were forests and swamps, but they are now agricultural land full of pesticides. If someone doesn't want to hurt nature too much, he/she should get back to the hunter-gatherer lifestyle (and if he/she REALLY cares, just gatherer, you know).

    • But are they willing to make real sacrifices for the environment? Probably not.

      They are doing what they can which is voicing their opinions to those who actually make decisions for them. After all you did correctly identify they are kids. What are they going to do? Vote out governments?

      You have to give up meat. You can't buy electronics devices. You can't use plastics. Can't drink milk or consume many other animal products unless they are expensive sustainable varieties.

      Man cut the hyperbole. There's metric shit-ton of stuff you can do for the environment that doesn't involve any of that and has far more impact than any of the things you just mentioned.

      Give up any sports or extracurriculars that require you to travel by bus.

      Their parents could learn a lot by example of people using a bus. That alone would be a good for the environment.

      When kids do those things, they will be standing on firm moral ground.

      They

    • if they actually strike then yeah, this is a real sacrifice.

      First off, 7 companies are responsible for the bulk of carbon emissions. Climate Change is an industrial problem. We need to get mega business to clean up and we need to switch to clean renewables. Not eating hamberders isn't going to help. The companies making those hamburgers will just pollute the same with vegetables. Cow Farts are overrated to make climate change sound silly.

      As for the Kids, I don't know about the rest of the world but

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Mousit ( 646085 )

      It doesn't take much to get a kid to decide not to go to school. But are they willing to make real sacrifices for the environment? Probably not. You have to give up meat. You can't buy electronics devices. You can't use plastics. Can't drink milk or consume many other animal products unless they are expensive sustainable varieties. You have to give up on shopping at the mall and do all your clothes shopping at thrift stores buying only highly durable clothing that lasts more than a season. Give up any sports or extracurriculars that require you to travel by bus.

      When kids do those things, they will be standing on firm moral ground.

      I wish TFS had bothered to link another Guardian article from earlier this week, that was specifically about Greta herself [theguardian.com]. Because.. yes, she did do those things. And not only did she make those sacrifices, she convinced her parents to as well. She even got her mother to give up flying, which had a severe impact on her career, for example.

      So yeah, at least in Greta's case, she's practicing what she preaches. Her whole family is.

  • Kids believe in stories (Score:2, Informative)

    by Kohath ( 38547 )

    Someone told these kids a story about the future and they believed it. Childrens' belief in stories about the future is not a reason to do anything one way or another.

    People should stop pretending they know the future. They don’t.

    • In my country of birth there were no tornadoes in the recorded history. Until a few years ago.
      Sure people have heard of them and seen them on TV, but never experienced them, so the first time one happened, they did not know what it was.
      Yes, and kids in that same country did hear the story about the Wizard of Oz.
      Do you think they believed that they were about to meet the Tin Man and his friends?
      Or that global warming may have something to do with what they experienced ?

      • In my country of birth there were no tornadoes in the recorded history.

        Just curious - how long is "recorded history" for that sort of thing where you were born? In the USA, "recorded history" for tornadoes in Kansas only goes back about 150 years, for instance....

        • Well, the Romans did record the history for a couple of hundred of yearrs.
          Then the Dark Ages followed until historical records re-started around 800 years ago.
          That is from before the Mini Ice Age. During the Mini Ice Age a lot of battles took place simply because armies could cross frozen rivers.

          That particular sort of thing I was born in had many natural distasters recorded in it history.
          Said recorder hstory started before the establishment of the Emirate of Granada, and runs until today.
          The USA by contras

    • Re:Kids believe in stories (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Ichijo ( 607641 ) on Friday March 15, 2019 @12:30PM (#58279400) Journal
      Do you contribute to a retirement account? Why do you do it if past performance is no guarantee of future results?

  • In other news (Score:3)

    by steak ( 145650 ) on Friday March 15, 2019 @10:46AM (#58278494) Homepage Journal

    Wind up toy jitters around after key is turned.

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday March 15, 2019 @10:50AM (#58278538)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • I wouldn't have noticed. Frankly, I spent 80% of my time in classes drawing and daydreaming -- the books were good enough to study for tests from. I still did well on all of my exams. The main parts of high school that were enjoyable were some class discussions, running cross country, pretty girls, and science labs after school.
      • You must have gone to my public school. When my parents figured out how a little I did to get my A's, and how poorly I was being prepared for college, they pulled me out and sent me to a top prep school for the last two years. Those were a very hard two years, I started so far behind my classmates, I couldn't afford to not pay attention in class. I was still into extracurriculars at the prep school, in fact they were required, but my classes were worth going to and participating in. I never regretted ch

    • Missing 20% of your school days doesn't seem like a good way to achieving their goals. If you don't have a good education, how do you expect to be able to effect positive change in the world? Fixing things takes more than good intentions.

      If your education being good depends on 20% of attendance you've already lost.

      Speaking of good intentions you are absolutely right. The problem is most of the stupid shits running the world don't have the least bit of good intentions.

  • The world keeps on spinning (Score:5, Insightful)

    by nehumanuscrede ( 624750 ) on Friday March 15, 2019 @10:55AM (#58278580)

    Kids aren't doing this because they genuinely give a damn about Climate Change.
    They're doing it because it's a convenient excuse to get out of school.

    Fail those who exceed the maximum number of days they can miss in a School Year.

    Once you introduce consequences into the equation, you'll figure out who is serious and who isn't.
    ( Those who are willing to watch their friends move on to the next grade level while they repeat it are the serious ones )

    Adult lesson of the day:
    It isn't much of a strike / protest unless you risk something in return.

    • Re:The world keeps on spinning (Score:5, Insightful)

      by b0s0z0ku ( 752509 ) on Friday March 15, 2019 @11:38AM (#58278954)
      Why fail anyone so long as they do their assigned homework and pass their exams? Why is listening to a teacher yammer and yap on and on about something that's in a book or online necessary? The culture (both at school and work) should change from "show up x hours per day and pretend to be busy" to "if you can do the assigned work, it doesn't matter how you do it, as long as you don't cheat."
  • Who's coordinating this behind the scenes? Who are the adults in charge of this? "Get a free day off school if you just go with our political program" is too good to be true. Our investigative journalists are asleep at the wheel. This is big, very big. There's a Pulitzer Prize waiting for the one who busts this open.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by skam240 ( 789197 )

      ....Or the more likely scenario that there is no massive conspiracy waiting to be broken open here.

      • So you're one of those weirdo coincidence theorists, huh? It is far more likely that this is being conducted with adult supervision, but whom? Youth have extended childhoods today, often going on until well into their 20s. You're going to tell me they can do complicated political activism, the kind that most adults can't get right, without any expert assistance?

        Even if it's not there, I would feel more comfortable if this is thoroughly investigated by people we trust the most: journalists. In fact, tha

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by skam240 ( 789197 )

          "It is far more likely that this is being conducted with adult supervision"

          No it's not. Kids don't need adult supervision to ditch school.

          " You're going to tell me they can do complicated political activism, the kind that most adults can't get right, without any expert assistance?"

          Not at all. What I will tell you is that they will ditch school and/or take advantage of an excuse to be self righteous on a whim. It should surprise no one that a bunch of kids acted on perfectly open social media calls to ditch

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tomhath ( 637240 )

      When Nancy Pelosi wanted to fly to Brussels on that junket during the government shutdown, did you happen to notice what was going there on that day?

      By some amazing coincidence there was a major children's march to raise climate change awareness among political leaders around the world on the day she scheduled a layover in Brussels. Nancy wanted to just happen to be there to stand in front of the cameras posturing as if she's a leader of some sort. Then Trump took away her plane ticket.

  • How shameful (Score:3, Insightful)

    by pecosdave ( 536896 ) on Friday March 15, 2019 @11:40AM (#58278970) Homepage Journal

    Manipulating kids on a global scale to push a political interest while pretending it's grass-roots and then reporting it that way in the news.

    It's time we call this what it is every time we see it. It's all about consolidated control.

    The people in charge of these movements don't give a rats ass about the environment, in fact they intentionally trigger and prolong real environmental disasters to justify more regulation. That's why the BP disaster in the gulf took so long to plug and rivers in Indian reservations were intentionally polluted by the EPA.

    They have to make each of us feel guilty in an individual basis too push their agenda. That's why stuff like this news article gets published.

    You want to really clean up the environment on a personal basis? Bring back deposit bottles, less manufacturing overhead and it gives kids and homeless something to make some money with. Stop the single use craze by buying in bulk and from farmers markets. Intentionally but things with less packaging.

    Want to address the larger scale? Legalize newer nuclear reactors that are less dangerous, like pebble bed reactors. Recycle the existing spent full no matter how Jimmy Carter feels about it. Get the ethanol out of our has engines. Start making Sterling Engines that run in ethanol to keep the corn lobby happy and to fuel local backup power and even supplement the grid. Use it to purify water while you're at it.

    This is propaganda people, recognize it, shine a light on it.

  • Eh, Manchester (UK) kids are protesting by blocking the trams, one of the friendliest to the environment mode of transportation available for the city. If they don't realize the stupidity of that now, they sure won't in the future by missing more school...

  • Did they? (Score:3, Funny)

    by argStyopa ( 232550 ) on Friday March 15, 2019 @11:55AM (#58279098) Journal

    ...or should the title really be "Kids skipping school opportunistically use some current cultural thing as excuse to avoid punishment"?

    I'm not sure I'm going to really follow the 'moral leadership' of a group who had to be repeatedly told to STOP EATING TIDE PODS.

    • I'm not sure they're going to really follow the 'moral leadership' of a group that repeatedly fell for the claim that they were eating Tide pods.

  • Ugh. Sooo stupid. I don't have words.

    1. Kids don't produce anything, striking saves resources
    2. Education is for their benefit
    3. Their parents may be liable for them not going to school
    4. This is obviously mostly done because of they want to skip class. That is why it is a Friday.
    5. Who are they are they trying to influence? You protest at a bank because of the policies of the bank. Schools are not causing CC
    6. Are they doing "productive" things during the time? Or just playing games or whatever?

    Ok.

  • My head hurts (Score:4, Insightful)

    by MBGMorden ( 803437 ) on Friday March 15, 2019 @12:26PM (#58279354)

    Half the arguments these days tend to go something like:

    Employee: "I'm taking Fridays off to protest global warming!"
    Boss: "How is that related to global warming?"
    Employee: "I can't believe you'd say something so racist!?!?!"
    Boss: "That had nothing to do with racism, and if you don't come in Friday you won't get paid."
    Employee: "How could you try to deny my existence!?"

    I'm not going to deny that global warming exists, but to speak bluntly: it doesn't much matter if we dump X amount of CO2 into the atmosphere in 100 years or 8000 years. On a global/geologic timescale they are approximately equal. Regardless of how fast we do it, every single fossil fuel on this planet will be used up and burned. All we can really do is cross our fingers and hope that however much CO2 that happens to be isn't so much that it kills everyone.

    If it's below that threshold, then we'll eventually create renewable energy sources out of necessity - essentially that will be our way of evolving through this change. If it's not, then whatever does survive will evolve to live in whatever new climate the planet settles into.

  • The few (some fraction of 1% or the 7.5 + billion population) who are controlling the correction of the climate issue need to get their ass in gear and get it done instead of just talking about it all the time. For certainly they are not allowing the rest of us, the mass majority of the population to participate, otherwise http://3seas.org/Voice_of_Glob... [3seas.org] would happen. Isn't it Obvious?

  • cook up a reason to skip school! We can all feel secure that some day these enlighten/educated?/smart individuals will be running things.

    Just my 2 cents ;)

  • The carbon problem will be solved by people who stay in school, get themselves a solid STEM education, and manage to get energy and sequestration projects going in places where the student activists can't "deplatform" them.

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