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Across the world Friday, students skipped class to protest their governments failure to take sufficient measures to curb climate change.
It all started with 16 year old Greta Thunberg of Sweden:
who began holding solitary demonstrations outside the Swedish parliament last year. Since then, the weekly protests have snowballed from a handful of cities to hundreds, fueled by dramatic headlines about the impact of climate change during the students' lifetime.
Thunberg has been nominated for a Nobel peace prize for her efforts.
The protestors are calling for a list of anti-climate change actions and solutions including:
Our Demands
- Green New Deal
- A halt in any and all fossil fuel infrastructure projects
- All decisions made by the government be based on the best-available and most-current scientific research.
- Declaring a National Emergency on Climate Change
- Compulsory comprehensive education on climate change and its impacts throughout grades K-8
- Preserving our public lands and wildlife
- Keeping our water supply clean
Our Solutions
- The extraction of Greenhouse Gases from the atmosphere
- Emission standards and benchmarks
- Changing the agriculture industry
- Using renewable energy and building renewable energy infrastructure
- Stopping the unsustainable and dangerous process of fracking
- Stop mountaintop removal/mining
In a speech Friday outside the United Nations HQ in New York, Alexandria Villasenor, one of the founders of Youth Climate Strike U.S. said:
world leaders weren't listening. "Our world leaders are the ones acting like children," she said. "They are the ones having tantrums, arguing with each other and refusing to take responsibility for their actions while the planet burns."
At one of these planned protests a year or two back, permission forms were sent home in advance so kids could get parental permission to participate in skipping school and protesting. Kids who didn't participate were taunted and harassed by the other kids.
How does your school treat such events?
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Arik on Saturday March 16 2019, @07:57AM (31 children)
The so-called teachers that set this absurdity up need to be named, shamed, and to work far away from children.
And maimed.
WTF!?!?!?!
For once I am unironically thinking of the children. As a child, there are all sorts of indignities you must endure. This scat shouldn't be part of that.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by MostCynical on Saturday March 16 2019, @08:02AM (28 children)
So your worldview can't allow this to be the children thinking for themselves? Or are the teachers guilty if they taught the children to think?
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 2) by Bot on Saturday March 16 2019, @08:06AM (17 children)
Doen not matter anyway. If greta had been against predatory banking instead, she would still be alone outside the parliament.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 1, Troll) by Arik on Saturday March 16 2019, @08:14AM (16 children)
Their security are not encouraged to consider their orders in any way beneath the law.
This is a "protest" carefully orchestrated by privileged elements of society.
And, I'll say it, perverted elements. Not in a sexy way.
Just ick.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 3, Touché) by sjames on Saturday March 16 2019, @08:33AM (12 children)
So if I have this right, not wanting the Earth turned into a hellworld is just some crazy conspiracy from the tri-lateral commission of some junk?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by aiwarrior on Saturday March 16 2019, @09:14AM (4 children)
To be honest I find a protest like this much more legitimate than the corporativist society that runs in my country, always squeezing the tit of the taxpayer for public worker raises.
Furthermore at least in my country this was a grassroots campaign outside traditional parties of the oligarchy. Maybe this makes their campaign weaker now, but developing a civic consciousness for something which is dear, our land and soil (and oceans) is a kind of civics that have not been in the news for some time.
Something that worried me though is that most of the protestants were girls. More and more I think boys are being left out. Not completely out of their own fault of course, but worrying nonetheless. Their unfitness to the modern school system and a care-free attitude may be very harmful for their potential
(Score: 2) by lentilla on Saturday March 16 2019, @10:36AM
Entirely unsurprising. If the plan was instead "dig a tunnel under the Swedish parliament and pack it with explosives" most of the participants would have been boys. As a sweeping generalisation, males strongly prefer direct action over sitting around discussing things. Which also goes to your point about boys being left out in the school system. I do not claim to be an education expert but even I am aware that being required to sit in a classroom; behaving; advantages those who are predisposed to it already. Which; as we noted above; appears to be be strongly correlated with gender.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 16 2019, @11:50AM (1 child)
Boys have been hearing for 30+ years that they don't matter, that the future belongs to girls. So it's not surprising they feel less responsibility to shape their own future -- if they do, they're much more likely to be villified for it.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by aiwarrior on Saturday March 16 2019, @07:36PM
I actually do not feel like we have been told anything like that. I actually think we had a head start and squander the initiative natural to the masculine gender on bullshit like getting high and looking "cool". More: the competitiveness of the modern world should be a boon to masculinity!
Instead boys become soft and looking for aesthetics and meaningless dabbling instead of trying to beat the game. We see girls playing the long game, showing daring behavior for their interests. Beating the modern game of media and civic action.
PS: One thing that always annoyed me about people who were great at having fun is that they destroyed their lives with no accomplishments and enter the age of responsibility with no accomplishment. Very clever and dear people who literally wasted their lives and will have a very hard time recovering. This is related to my biggest grudge with weed: Not that it is immoral, but a waste of humanities' best asset if done daily: it's intellect.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Sunday March 17 2019, @07:59PM
On the other hand, police are less likely to rough up a girl...
(Score: 2) by Bot on Saturday March 16 2019, @09:56AM (5 children)
Nobody disputes the importance of the stated goal. Which means nothing. Everyfuckingbody states a noble ultimate goal. Free the oppressed from the nobles, free the proletariat from the bourgeois, avenge the oppressed German people, make America great again...
What is happening is a reorganization of leftists. You cannot leave the youth getting their info from meme laden Chan's so you organize protests are n the most unifying theme.
Now, it is entirely possible that a truly global movement succeeds in reducing emissions but Arabs China and Russia and the Pentagon must be on it, for real. Remember the recent CFC in the atmosphere. But that list of demands points in the other direction, a generic scope under which whatever monstrosity can be done, and we all know how socialism, red or black variety, seems to always end up in such things.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Saturday March 16 2019, @10:19AM (3 children)
Lol and forgot, the cult of personality. Hail Greta. At least other movements like Italian cinquestelle try to break free from it. In fact cinquestelle is the closest thing to a left wing movement and lefties hate it...
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Saturday March 16 2019, @07:27PM (2 children)
yes, of course, a 16 year old girl is plotting world domination and she's duped the entire left for her evil machinations.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Sunday March 17 2019, @10:54AM (1 child)
>is plotting world domination
Is this really the complete space of possibilities you could come up with? Do you even 8-bit?
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Sunday March 17 2019, @07:57PM
You're the one that invoked a salutation to the Emperor of Rome.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 16 2019, @03:10PM
There will be lots of pollution as long as China is populated. The pentagon can fix that.
The same goes for the rest of the world, really. Eliminating non-Americans would make world pollution much less significant.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday March 16 2019, @02:22PM
It's a nice emotion. But is it really worth making things worse in order to show that you care? Nope.
What's going on here is that a bunch of schools (including some around Denver where I'm currently staying) which shutdown completely or partially, creating all kinds of unnecessary wastes of resources, time, and effort, just so some educators could virtue signal. Even with global warming, Earth is not going to be a hellworld. And disrupting society for one's faddish cause of the day isn't going to improve anything.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Runaway1956 on Saturday March 16 2019, @01:32PM (2 children)
That is, after all, how women's lib got started. Bunch of old rich women at the country clubs, bored to tears with their worthless lives, decided they should have all the rights that men have.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 17 2019, @06:08AM (1 child)
Women's lib was not an engineering problem. CO2 emissions are. To solve this engineering problem, stay home form school kids.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday March 17 2019, @06:17AM
Women's lib was a social engineering problem.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Arik on Saturday March 16 2019, @08:09AM (2 children)
Unfortunately, when they do, they're labeled as problems.
This is not independent thought. It's carefully regurgitated and preprogrammed.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 16 2019, @01:25PM (1 child)
You seem to have labelled these kids as a problem. Ergo, these kids are thinking independently. Oops? Stop contradicting yourself.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Sunday March 17 2019, @10:57AM
>You seem to
Wrong premise leads to wrong conclusion.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by AthanasiusKircher on Saturday March 16 2019, @02:07PM
Irony of ironies, this.
It's widely been written out of history of education, but a strong force in the so-called "high school movement" of the early to mid 1900s was to get politicized teenagers off the streets and to curb their dangerous impulses that could be politically disruptive (in the U.S., this was often framed in terms of concerns about socialists).
Prior to this time, most teens just went directly into the workforce after primary school (some even earlier). The major driving force for public education in the late 1800s had been training good industrial workers with basic skills like reading and arithmetic. Why should we waste time on the masses with high school, though?
Because new child labor restrictions meant it was getting more complicated to just work kids to death... meaning kids had more time, and youth back then (as today) were likely to be swept into radical ideologies and movements.
So, we jail them in schools to (1) give some "civics" instruction (indoctrination), and (2) break their spirits through structured time that discourages independent thought.
And now we apparently find it shocking that students will skip school for political protest!? This is the very reason we put them in schools in the first place -- to prevent this sort of dangerous radical nonsense!
Thanks to Arik for reminding us of the true roots of public education and its purpose. We definitely need to beat this crap down immediately.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Rich26189 on Saturday March 16 2019, @02:27PM (5 children)
Yes, it's possible the teachers taught the children to think. Another possibility, there was a lot of coaching and prompting.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Saturday March 16 2019, @07:48PM (4 children)
As opposed to the ideologically neutral education you received when you were that age?
(Score: 2) by Bot on Sunday March 17 2019, @10:59AM (3 children)
I think he received little education, or he would not be posting here. You too.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Sunday March 17 2019, @08:02PM (2 children)
I note that you are posting here as well...
(Score: 2) by Bot on Monday March 18 2019, @01:30PM (1 child)
Thank you to explaining the joke.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Monday March 18 2019, @06:49PM
You're welcome.
(Score: 4, Touché) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday March 16 2019, @11:23AM
Relax. The day ending in "y" is a solid enough excuse for teenagers to skip school. I went to school with folks who would have skipped to protest women's suffrage. About half of them female. Even among those who knew what "women's suffrage" meant.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 16 2019, @10:05PM
Read your own words and contemplate just who is the bigger danger. People advocating for their home (planet) or someone advocating draconian punishments for people they don't agree with.
The ignorant are just SO ANGRY that anyone pops the bubble of their worldview that they advocate killing the educators. Astounding.