Student climate strike: towards change

It is consensual that the steps taken in terms of technology, digitalisation and communication have been occurring at high speed, with ever shorter cycles for the launch and hegemony of a certain novelty. Let's think about music and what has happened in 80 years. Vinyl appeared in the late 1940s and four decades later, in 1984, the first music CD was released: Born in the U.S.A. by Bruce Springsteen. But it only took 15 years for something new to appear on the market. I am referring to peer to peer solutions (Napster being the best known) that have democratised music, making it accessible to everyone. This phenomenon reached its peak two years later with the arrival of the iPod and the Apple Store. Seven years later, streaming solutions such as YouTube, Sound Cloud or Spotify appeared. Music is even more accessible to everyone: offline, online, entire album, just one track, video clips? Everything can be shared. The alternatives are countless and they are being upgraded every day. Recently, the use of blockchain technology has emerged also for music: making our music library available to friends through a token. Impressive!

What about environmental issues, climate change (formerly called 'global warming' as the film Vice has shown us) and the SDG agenda? Did we think it was possible that these issues would move so quickly from the scientific environment into our daily lives?

There has been a succession of events, which has led to a growing awareness among the population and an increase in citizens' demands - the student climate strike on 15 March is a clear example of this.

Climate change sceptics, whether advocates of interest or belief, have been confronted with increasing evidence that something is happening or will happen with greater intensity. Waste concerns, which seemed to be confined to Europe, are beginning to spread to other parts of the world.

These are some of the dimensions of the environmental challenge that force us to assume, once and for all, that we can in no way continue to live as we have lived until very recently: with indifference on the part of companies (many of the measures taken by some of them served only to convey an image of a "green" positioning) and the population (only a small minority was committed and vocal on environmental issues). The problems or headaches either came from far away or were sent far away. That time is over!

What brought us here?

Although the European Union has always been a relatively effective hub for issuing directives and regulations - unlike the United States, whose regulatory output is characterised as zigzagging - at the multilateral level, it is only recently that a record of effectiveness and mobilisation for action has been achieved, an example of which is the Paris climate summit.

What about companies? The moment of true awareness and the first steps towards changing the mindsets of these economic agents occurred when, in 2013, the Ellen MacArthur Foundation launched the first manifesto on Circular Economy which was, in the same year, adopted by the European Commission. From that date onwards, companies truly began to assume what they had long known: the need to preserve finite natural resources, taking advantage of the value associated with waste through recycling and reuse, taking advantage of the various natural energy sources, or reusing water.

In 2017, one of the most dramatic facets of the environmental challenge reaches the population with the images of pollution in the oceans, originating from the five continents. At that time, the real social pressure begins from consumers who are the actors who materialize their "protest", through their purchasing decisions. Companies then start to take the sustainability issue further - today, if they do not assume it in a strategic way, they will be doomed in the long run.

In the wake of growing awareness and outrage, in January 2019, we witnessed the remarkable speech of Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old climate activist, at the World Economic Forum. Last March 15, young people mobilised in the Student Climate Strike, a movement that is truly international. Another strike is planned for May. Will it be short-lived? I don't think so, I really don't!

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The Climate Student Strike

We know that young people have always been the drivers and agents of major social and political change and I believe they will continue to be so. What happened on 15 March was a global manifesto for a global problem: 1.2 million students in 123 countries went on strike. A global, decentralised movement that to some extent also calls into question the traditional environmentalist organisations.

Society is being confronted with children, young people, who become adults when they become aware of a problem, demonstrating peacefully to call on adults to act. It is a protest against those who are deciding their future without them having a say. In an increasingly global world, where information and knowledge are accessible to all, young people feel betrayed by the short-term vision of political decision-makers and most companies, which will ensure that nothing will ever be the same again.

"My generation has failed to respond adequately to the dramatic challenge of climate change. That is deeply felt by young people. No wonder they are angry." António Guterres, The Guardian

And now what?

Will the fight against climate change, a scourge increasingly visible in our daily lives, reinforced by this youth movement, lead countries to assume the problem once and for all, and not deny it for short-term economic or political interests? Will Australia start thinking about the issue instead of just thinking about its coal industry? Will the United States continue to deny successive extreme weather phenomena, claiming that the California fires were due to poor forest management? Will Brazil continue to allow the deforestation of the Amazon rainforest? Or that Asian countries will insist on not controlling the plastic rivers that are in plain sight and contaminating our oceans?

This inaction, and the little credible rationales behind it, may even remain but not for long as the pressure to act will grow. I believe that we will all give the appropriate response. We are called to act and we are prepared to walk this new road of changing our habits for a cause that is global and trans-generational.