Here is a letter that is less than 1 page long and is designed to gather support for the Global Climate Strike on Friday 20th of September. Please feel free to adapt, sign as your own, share widely and use to initiate a conversation in your workplace or with anyone.
On Friday the 20th of September, we have an opportunity to show our support for a movement that is focussed on building a new way of life for humanity: one that does not take our planetary home for granted and works to protect it for future generations and for other species. Without this transformation, we will continue to do irreparable damage to the environment, to our soils and rivers, seas and fellow creatures.
This is just one day of the year, dedicated to the biggest issue facing the entire human race. No matter how important our work is, we can find a way to strike in support. If we work in a caring field, or anywhere that safety is an issue, we can suggest that those who don’t want to strike are rostered on to work. Management may be open to this, if they recognise the unparalleled danger that we face. If not, we can apply for leave. But however we do it, we have to strike. We have to show that business as usual is a death sentence for life as we know it.
The devastating impacts of human-induced climate chaos are increasing daily. Animals and plants are becoming extinct in frightening numbers. We are involved today in a struggle that is no longer ideological (about beliefs or ideas), or historical, but scientifically validated as an existential threat to living species on this planet right now. This is the most important moment to be alive in the history of humanity. No longer do our actions only matter to our local communities – although they still do. We must now give in to the call to “Think Globally and Act Locally”, for this emerging crisis affects us all.
On Friday the 20th of September, we are being asked – by leaders in the environmental movement, by school students who can see their very future crumbling before them, by climate scientists and communicators the world over – to strike for climate action. I call upon you now to
commit to this action and to make your commitment public;
talk with your colleagues about how to keep everybody safe (rostering staff who are prepared to stay on at work to ensure public safety while others strike);
make a statement of support for the general strike’s aims, which are to call upon world leaders in politics and industry to support serious and immediate climate action such as complete transformation of energy to a carbon neutral world; and to
enable your organisation, department or corporation to professionally and compassionately manage this day in support of climate action, as meaningful participants in the most important movement of our times, in ways that promote the transformation of our own work practices in alignment with a carbon neutral global society.
Yours in civil disobedience, Geoff Berry [*NB: adapt and sign your own name here freely!]
Greta Thunberg rules! Listen to her speak truth to the world direct.
I’m going to the strike. I’m taking my kids out of primary school. I don’t care if they get it yet or not. They need to know that i care and that they are going to. Why? Because climate scientists have been pointing this out for over 25 years, since they said (at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992) that overwhelming indications pointed towards massive damage being done to the earth’s biosphere by modern industrial society. Since then, unfortunately, it’s been mostly business as usual: mass media has supported politics aligned with global corporations, to continue supporting the damage done, in the name of profit. It’s frustrating to know this and to watch people – even intelligent, open-minded adults – clutch at straws and try to believe that we can continue to destroy the earth and not pay the ultimate price.
Sometimes, it takes an innocent or an outsider to destroy our illusions and smash the bubble of lies we have woven for ourselves. The Emperor has no clothes! Now, again, a child has come to wake us up. This is kinda embarrassing. How is it that a strike has to be called by children, who want to leave school to try and make political leaders realise that they have to act now if we are to save the environment from irreversible damage? It’s not like we have lacked credible science or anything … no less than the IPCC – that’s the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the leading international body for the assessment of climate change, and a source of scientific information and technical guidance for Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change – has been trying to wake us up for years.
But we all love a good story, especially when it means we can enjoy creature comforts and believe we are chosen to live in the lap of luxury, not merely by the good fortune of technological development and historical serendipity, but because … we are special. That is the power of myth. A powerful myth convinces you that you can have it all; you can enjoy life here and now and in the body, as well as knowing that you are destined by the forces of the universe to carry on in splendour and majesty beyond this mortal coil. Doesn’t that sound great?! Yeah!
And to think, without destroying our planetary home, we could have all of this, with a sophisticated understanding of how myth works within and without. In the world and in our hearts and body/minds, we are star dust, evolving to be at one with eternal consciousness, unlimited … unless we choose not to. And then we become forgetful, worldlings, limited, socialised, attached, adult. And then, we need the children, the fools, the artists, the whimsical, the poets, to remind us. That we are more. As Marianne Williamson put it, “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be?”
So don’t just let the kids lead the way! Strike! Join them (and us). Why can’t we organise and resist the devastation of the world as adults? Because we are so caught up in the myth of technological progress and plenty that we are drunk on it. We can’t always see the truth so obviously dangling before our eyes. But Greta can. The kids can. And we can wake up to it too. It’s about time. Let’s speak out and make our kids proud. They’ll remember this, when the damage really starts to hit in the near future. They’ll know that we cared enough to strike out, against the mainstream, for change. And that we never gave up.
What can we say about the recent IPCC report and its 12-year timeframe?
Climate scientists have long been balancing on a thin wire, trying to communicate the peril we are in without sounding alarmist or as if they have a political agenda. From an environmental activist point of view, they’ve been criticised for being too patient and cautious. Yet one thing we can be sure of now is that their language has gotten more urgent as time has passed and more evidence has accrued that we are passing the tipping points of a planet safe for human habitation. The IPCC (the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) have gone over review after review of their predictions, based on the best modelling we have at our disposal, and everything points to things being worse than they ever predicted. Oops – party stopper!
The Guardian article on the recent IPCC report is here
So let me try something, by putting this in everyday language … can we finally say, without sounding alarmist, and with the knowledge that we are starting to look really foolish and cowardly if we don’t, that we are now officially at the precipice of ecological collapse, as the environmental devastation of global capitalism runs amok and governments fall like dominoes to far right aggression? Can we talk about it yet? I’ve written before about how and why the “big man” caricature wins in dangerous times and it’s sad to see that I was right, in early 2016, and that it just keeps getting worse; now see Brazil’s new far right champion.
To get to the bottom of this phenomenon, I went back to the origins of large-scale civilizations to see what we can learn from them. When people get scared, they look for protection – even if the gang leader is the most threatening character in their world! In fact, that’s how classic standover tactics work: pay the thugs to make sure no-one harms you, with the strong insinuation that if you don’t, those very thugs will burn your house down overnight, whether you are in it or not. Now the house is the planet and the thugs are transnational corporations and the politicians that protect their interests. I don’t think we can hide from that anymore. What might have sounded like conspiracy theory 20 years ago is mainstream political analysis nowadays.
We’ve got to keep working on resilient communities; securing our own local food sources, finding ways to become less dependent on fossil fuels, getting together and sharing and taking care of each other. But we may need to start extending things like refusing single-use plastic and demanding food without poison in it, to actions based on the civil disobedience model. Here are a couple of examples:
Extinction Rebellion are standing against the unprecedented global emergency of the ecological crisis and the sixth mass extinction we are in the midst of, by asking for massive truth bombs about the real dangers we currently inhabit, shorn of media white washing and political inaction. They also feature a cool wallpaper-like set of visuals that neatly convey their core messages:
And Deep Green Resistance state that“Our best and only hope is a resistance movement that is willing to face the scale of the horrors, gather our forces, and fight like hell for all we hold dear.”
I loved reading Henry David Thoreau when I was first in university. He loved nature and fought for the truth; and it was he who coined the term civil disobedience. It is supposed to mean turning away from the law as it is encoded by vested interests, when you can tell there is a greater truth arising from reality. As I reiterated recently: Since the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 we have known that industrial civilisation threatens the health of our planet. It is time we started to really act like this shit is getting real and getting out of our comfort zone. We deserve better, so do the next generations, and so do the animals and plants that have so far survived the onslaught of modern technological civilisation. And hey, we might even enjoy getting down to it! Maybe it’s not the end of the party after all …
The Guardian article on the recent IPCC report is 