Strikes

Yesterday, hundreds of thousands of kids worldwide joined Greta Thunberg in her strike for “climate action”. From the beginning, I have had mixed feelings about this. On one hand, and unlike say the civil rights movement in the 1960’s, it remains most unclear what kind of “action” it is that Greta and the others actually demand. On the other hand, bringing climate change higher up on the political agenda could in theory be a good thing but, given the current policy paradigm, I have my doubts about this as well.

If “climate action” translates into renewed neo-colonial efforts to impose “sustainable energy transitions” on poor people in the developing world or the destruction of yet more forests at home in the name of a “circular bioeconomy”, I think we should rightfully be worried about where we are heading. As much as my default orientation is to always side with “young people”, this is a case when hyperbolic talk of an “existential crisis” may just further lock in renewable energy and make the task of global decarbonization even more difficult.