WHAT ON EARTH WINTER 2019
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Building people power to tackle the climate crisis By Kate Whitaker, Activism Organiser Fossil fuel corporations, alongside many of their pals, love to tell us that the way we can contribute to solving the climate crisis is to focus on our individual actions: take shorter showers, buy a reusable cup and switch o the lights. This strategy, which positions individual consumption choices as the only arena of change, will not deliver emissions reductions at the scale we need, and, but serves to isolate and shame people, preventing them from taking collective action against those who are driving the emergency. But the more you learn about the climate crisis, the bigger and scarier it gets and the more obvious that consumer choices alone are not going to solve the problem. Climate change is just the latest and most severe consequence of a capitalist, colonial system that has exploited people and nature for centuries. We know that without taking on that system as a whole, and overcoming its toxic legacy across the world, the climate crisis will only intensify.
Campaigning and activism that targets the root causes of the crisis, is a way to respond which both feels proportionate and provides people with a support network Over the past year we have seen the visibility, scale and actors of the climate movement in Scotland and across much of the world change dramatically. Since the publication of the IPCC Report we have seen an outburst of climate activism, including the rise of the school strikes, Extinction Rebellion, worker-led calls for transition, direct action against the fossil fuel industry and more. Since then, the space which climate justice activism has taken up in the media, public conversation and physically in public spaces has completely transformed.
When confronted with the existential threat of the climate crisis, and told that the way for tackling this is turning o the lights, people are largely faced with the choice of not believing it could actually be that bad or complete helplessness. However, campaigning and activism that targets the root causes of the problem, is a way to respond which both feels proportionate and provides people with a support network for dealing with the fear of the crisis we are living through.
Climate strike protest took place around the world. In Vienna, they criticised greenwashing of the crisis. Photo: Global 2000
