This Saturday, the youth will march


Jasmine Huggins | July 18, 2018

Learn more about the Youth Climate March and Zero Hour movement at thisiszerohour.org.

This week, young people from all around the United States will descend upon the nation’s capital to express concern for the planet and call for urgent climate action.  They will speak to the Congressional representatives on Lobby Day on Thursday and build creative and artistic expressions on Friday.  Then on Saturday, they’ll march.

Many will be skeptical about the extent to which another such event will succeed in changing the current course of U.S. government action on climate change.   Several public marches have already taken place, but U.S. policy didn’t get any better.  It got worse.

Back in September 2014, when I, along with other enthusiastic CWS supporters, participated in New York City with more than 300,000 concerned individuals in what was then the world’s first truly global Climate March, none of us could have predicted the world we are now living in, just four years later. The United States government, which did so much to make the Paris Agreement happen, is now the only country in the world to have withdrawn from it. The U.S. Administration has also rolled back plans to cut carbon emissions; cancelled contributions to global funds that enable poor countries to adjust to climate disruption; granted permits for oil, coal exploration and environmentally hazardous pipelines; appointed climate skeptics and deniers to manage key U.S. institutions responsible for safeguarding natural resources; skewered  environmental protections legislation and budgets; vilified scientists; expunged science vocabulary from public websites and disparaged the scientific process itself.  None of us could have predicted these times in 2014. If someone with a crystal ball back then had foretold it all, scornfully we would have dismissed it .

Let’s be honest.  None of previous high points in the global climate movement – Laudato Si, the Papal Encyclical; papal speeches about climate at the UN and U.S. Congress; the Paris Agreement; heightened public awareness of and demand for governmental action on climate, and yes, public marches – prevented the 2016 presidential electoral outcome, which has proven so disastrous for our stewardship of the planet.  Instead of picking a leader who could have built upon the imperfect, yet forward looking, policies of his predecessor, climate-affected U.S. citizens picked instead one who has willfully dismantled it.  The lesson from this is clear:  Perilous though it can be, U.S. policy has taken, and will continue to take, its course.  Another climate march, however energetic and eager it may be, will not necessarily change this.

But we should support this youth march anyway.

For history has also taught us other lessons: the will of good people eventually prevails, especially when they are asking for policies in favor of the common good, of equity and redistributive justice.  Bottom up mobilization, over time, contributes to building the momentum needed to make decisive shifts in public opinion and these shifts in turn can sway legislation and political decisions.  Once skeptical individuals can, when brought face to face with the potential ramifications of their own inaction, and when inspired by the irrepressible tug of organized, collective action, change their minds.  History has also taught us that when such organized groups are motivated by democratic principles, a commitment to nonviolence, inclusiveness and a vision for an improved world where all benefit, they can move mountains and they contribute to long term, lasting social change. The Guiding Principles outlined by the This Is Zero Hour tick all these boxes: they honor the Indigenous presence, respect nature and animals, affirm inter-generational learning, are inclusive of all faiths, genders, races and orientations and abilities, abhor discrimination all forms of oppression and call for transformative justice.

Pragmatism too, encourages us to overcome our cynicism and silence our own doubts about how far public action can, in our currently overly toxic political environment, change anything.   We – who still heed scientific advice – listen when climate experts say that we are getting perilously close to a tipping point where irreversible changes unleash even more costly natural and human disasters than we have already all witnessed of late. Chances are that many of us will be gone, or too aged to respond, when that happens.  But the young activists coming to Washington D.C. this weekend, won’t be.  Adolescents, most of them, today, they will be young adults while all this happens.  Literally, they will inherit the earth.

Moreover, the asks of their July 21st campaigning weekend are reasonable and doable. Specifically, the This is Zero Hour Movement is calling on politicians to pledge that they will not receive funding from any fossil fuel companies.  That, and to listen.

These young people should, can and will have their say. We need not only to listen, but to provide support so that as many as possible can hear them speak.

“What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight; build anyway,” said the theologian.

And so the nation’s youth will march on July 21st, building anyway towards their vision of a better world that they can see.

Help them.  Join them.

Jasmine Huggins is the Senior Policy and Advocacy Officer with CWS.