Christopher Rootes, Professor of Environmental Politics and Political Sociology in the School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research, comments on the growing movement against climate change being led by school children and whether it will make a difference.
‘The question I am most often asked about protests is whether they make a difference. Faced with the enormity of global warming and global climate change, how can the actions of hundreds, thousands, even millions of schoolchildren and students be expected to have any impact?
‘But it is already having an impact. From the first protest by a single Swedish schoolgirl 30 weeks ago, a worldwide movement has grown. It is not orchestrated by anyone or by any organization. It has spread via news and social media, and it has grown because it speaks to the alarm that many people feel powerless to address.
‘Nobody who reads the scientific reports of recent years or months can fail to be alarmed by the mounting evidence of accelerating environmental change and its consequences for people, animals and plants. Unless, of course, they believe that the great majority of scientists working on environmental issues are less well-informed and have less integrity than the owners and promoters of coalmines and oilwells.
‘It is not surprising that it is young people who should be those who are most alarmed and most willing to give voice to their concern. It is, after all, they who must look forward to a world in which some of the most mmarvellouswonders of the natural world are vanishing at an increasing rate and in which even the most basic conditions of life are becoming more uncertain.
‘But can this movement of young people change anything? It already has. Number 10’s response to the first climate strike a month ago was to lament the disruption of school lessons. Today, in response to the second strike, the Environment Secretary declares that “Collective action of the kind you’re championing can make a difference, and a profound one … Together we can beat climate change. It will require us to change the way in which our energy is generated, change the way in which our homes are built, change the way in which our land is managed and farming operates. But that change is absolutely necessary”.
‘The actions of children have made it more likely that more people will listen, and that more will act to address this, the most compelling problem of our time.’
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