In each of these examples, resorting to civil disobedience is now widely regarded as courageous and right. Civil disobedience played a role, along with other forms of protest, in ending the Vietnam War. In the United States, its most famous proponent was Martin Luther King, Jr., in the struggle against racial segregation. Extinction Rebellion calls for thousands of activists to block roads and shut down transport systems in major cities around the world, not just for one day, but for long enough to impose real economic costs on governments and business elites, all the while maintaining strictly nonviolent discipline even in the face of government repression.Ĭivil disobedience was first used as part of a mass movement by Mahatma Gandhi (born 150 years ago this month) in South Africa and subsequently in India. “Extinction Rebellion,” an international movement that began last year with a Declaration of Rebellion in London, advocates civil disobedience. And change is coming, whether you like it or not.”Ĭan young people really wake the world to the urgency of changing direction? Can they convince their parents? School strikes will trouble parents, especially parents who then need to arrange child care, but will they influence political leaders? What can be done to keep climate on the agenda until governments get serious about reducing the risk of catastrophe? Right here, right now is where we draw the line. How will we get there? Thunberg ended on a positive note: “We will not let you get away with this. For affluent countries, on the other hand, the required transition to a clean economy would bring some transitional costs, but in the long run would save lives and benefit everyone.Īccess every new PS commentary, our entire On Point suite of subscriber-exclusive content – including Longer Reads, Insider Interviews, Big Picture/Big Question, and Say More – and the full PS archive. To impose on them a one in three chance of warming beyond 1.5✬ is playing a kind of Russian roulette, as if we had put a revolver against the heads of tens or perhaps hundreds of millions of people in low-income countries – except that we have loaded our six-chambered revolver with two bullets rather than one. For affluent countries, which are responsible for most of the CO 2 that is now in the atmosphere, there can be no ethical justification for continuing to emit greenhouse gases at far higher per capita levels than the people in low-income countries who will suffer most from climate change. The ethical issue is not difficult to adjudicate. The United States is in the bottom five, along with Saudi Arabia, Iran, South Korea, and Taiwan. Sweden, Morocco, and Lithuania are currently doing the best, with Latvia and the United Kingdom not far behind. At the current rate, we will exceed this limit in 2028.Īccording to the Climate Change Performance Index, no government in the world has yet achieved a “very good” performance in protecting the world’s climate. Thunberg referred to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s report indicating that to reduce the risk of exceeding 1.5✬ to one in three, we will need to limit global carbon dioxide emissions from now until 2050 to 350 gigatons. Passing that limit risks setting off uncontrollable feedback loops leading to further warming, more feedback loops, and yet more warming. Now even the heroic effort of halving emissions over the next ten years would, Thunberg pointed out, give us only a 50% chance of keeping global warming below 1.5º Celsius. World leaders have looked away while the opportunities for a timely transition to a net-zero greenhouse-gas economy slipped by. Thunberg justified her outrage by pointing out that the science of climate change has been known for 30 years. How dare they say that they are doing enough? How dare they pretend that “business as usual,” coupled with yet-to-be-discovered technological solutions, will solve the problem? Her tone of moral outrage was therefore apt, as was the leitmotif of her speech: “How dare you?” She accused the world’s leaders of stealing the dreams of the young with empty words. The marchers were predominantly the young people who will have to cope with more of the costs of climate change than the world leaders Thunberg was addressing.
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