Youth Climate Activists

By KN

I attended two segments of the Youth Climate Movement conference that Ramapo College hosted online this semester. I listened to two women talk about their relationship with climate change and how it affects many other aspects of our lives.

First I listened to Gabriella talk about how voting can change our current climate situation and how there are many different aspects intertwined with climate change. She talked about the campaign ‘Vote Your Future’. She stressed that voting can make a huge difference to how our generation and future generations will experience life. It’s important to vote for someone who believes that there needs to change as there are still people out there who don’t believe in climate change. Climate change isn’t a slogan or made up idea but in fact a very serious topic referring to our planet. She went on to mention some of her accomplishments, as she was part of the Climate Change Action Fund and lead the energy justice campaign. She also pointed out that every movement started by younger generations and how most of them have succeeded in their efforts to bring awareness to many different issues relevant to our lives.

With the younger generation starting the movement it is very important that the older generations back them up and take part in those movements with them. Older generations are respected more than younger generations throughout society, so to have them join can make a difference. Lastly she finished by saying how Generation Z is the generation to make change and bring up all different types of issues as we are very open minded and diverse. Any opportunity given to join the movement should be taken as the more people join, the more change will come.

Secondly, I listened to a girl from the Sun Rise Movement who I believe is named Sam. Sam had the same points that Gabriella had in stressing how serious the climate crisis is. To make change we need bold uncompromising change. She mentioned the Green New Deal, which is “a proposed package of United States legislation that aims to address climate change and economic inequality”(Google). In order for the Green New Deal to work there needs to be better representatives in office.

The Sun Rise Movement stresses that for there to be transformative movement there are three main factors needed; people power, political power, and people’s alignment. People power is simple to understand, which is there are people needed to make this issue known and addressed. Sam also mentioned that for there to be change in any movement there needs to be 3.5 % of the population involved. To put into perspective, for there to be permanent change in the climate crisis 11 million people need to be involved. Political power is having the right representatives in office and Donald Trump is not the right person for that job, he refuses to believe the climate crisis is real.

Lastly, people's alignment is needed. Everyone involved needs to have an understanding that we need to make improvements in many different aspects to make change to the climate crisis. The last point made was that even though we may think the same way there needs to be a variety of different campaigns and movements as it eventually forms unity throughout our community.