Climate Actions for Peace — September 20-27
Support the Striving of the Youth for Change!
Youth take to Parliament Hill for Student Climate Strike, March 15, 2019.
This week, youth the world over are engaging in actions to express urgent demands for what is required to safeguard the natural environment and defend it from the consequences of the pillage, plunder and devastation caused by narrow private interests. These actions coincide with the International Day of Peace declared by the United Nations Organization General Assembly in 1981. The theme this year is “Climate Action for Peace.” The UN website says it seeks to “draw attention to the importance of combating climate change as a way to protect and promote peace throughout the world.” The UN highlights problems of access to and shortages of resources such as agricultural land, drinking water and energy and says this is increasing tensions around the world and causing serious conflicts. “Climate change causes clear threats to international peace and security,” the UN website writes.
Nothing is said about the stranglehold of the international financial oligarchy which has usurped control of not only the resources of Mother Earth but also the decision-making processes and war-making machines which enable it to make the rich richer, and to hell with the everyone and everything. This is the root cause of the destruction of the environment and it cannot be ignored. The essence of the platform of the Marxist-Leninist Party of Canada is to humanize the social and natural environment and the Party supports all those who take practical measures which contribute to making the world sustainable.
In 2015, UN member states established 17 Sustainable Development Goals covering those issues the UN says are crucial. This include “poverty, hunger, health, education, climate change, gender equality, water, sanitation, energy, environment and social justice.” The 13th goal is climate action. This year, on September 23, the UN is holding a Climate Action Summit on the theme, “Race We Can Win. A Race We Must Win.”
On this occasion, high school students across the world are taking matters into their own hands by organizing the next world-wide School Strike for Climate (SSC). SSC is an international movement of students who skip class to organize demonstrations to demand action on global warming and climate change. The first world-wide strike took place on November 30, 2015 on the first day of the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris. Other world-wide and area-focused strikes have followed.
School Strike for Climate has announced two major global strikes for September 2019. One is on Friday, September 20, three days before a UN emergency climate summit being held in New York, and the other is on Friday, September 27, the 57th anniversary of the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. Individual countries and cities will organize strikes on one or both dates.
Organizers are optimistic that these latest strikes will have the largest turnout of any climate strikes thus far, by including workers, university students, retired people, and all others who are concerned, in addition to the school students who led previous strikes. Everyone is called upon to get out to these important events and to support the youth in their aim to make the world better.