The People's Voice: Fight for our Environmental Future

Climate change refers to long-term shifts in temperatures and weather patterns. These shifts may be natural, such as through variations in the solar cycle. But since the 1800s, human activities have been the main driver of climate change, primarily due to burning fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas.

Fig. 1 :Climate Change

Climate change is an existential threat to the world. The world health org predicts that in 30 years climate change will be directly responsible for the deaths 250000 people each year. While Government is being ignorant, determined pressure groups believe the change is possible and these movements are gathering momentum.

THE SUNRISE MOVEMENT

Fig. 2 : The Origin of The Sunrise Movement

-The Sunrise movement is a group of activists which was led by 26-year-old Varshney Prakash and was followed by nearly 100000 members most of them being under 30

-The agenda was clear - To halt the climate change and Pressurizing Government to work for the matter.

-The movement came into action when these young people wanted to do something about the hurricanes and floods getting bigger and fire getting longer.

-The heart of the movement is the Green new Deal. The idea of this policy is to end the dependency on the fossil fuels and move towards the renewable energy and creating jobs simultaneously.

- All the members are dedicated towards the goal of making the world a better place to live.

- There are 204 hubs of the Sunrise Movement spread across the nation. The Hub meeting takes place every month where members share their experiences and get behind the cause.

- The hubs give people of all backgrounds an opportunity to come together and voice their concerns

-When asked the member why they joined the sunrise movement, they said that the people believed they were not enough powerful individually and so they had to come together into this.

- The sunrise movement is always on its toes to take actions; they made their voice to be heard.

- The Sunrise movement tried to encourage politicians to sign a pledge promising that they will refuse money from the fossil fuel companies. Several politicians supported the movement.

- The sunrise movement is clearly influential and getting results where it matters the most.

- The ultimate goal is the convince the majority of congress men and women to sponsor THE GREEN NEW DEAL.

- The Sunrise Movement asked the Govt to make the Green new deal a Policy. This was too much to ask for. But for a problem that is massive as climate change, they wanted ambitious radical solutions.

By analyzing past civil resistance movements, political scientists identified a threshold for success.

The Sunrise Movement proved the World that If people are aware and ready to take action Social Change is possible.

EXTINCTION REBELLION

In October 2018 a group of activists angered by the political inaction on climate change declared themselves to be an open defiance of the UK Government. They called themselves “EXTINCTION REBELION”. Their strategy is to create Headline grabbing Protests designed to maximize public exposure. They believe this will bring a mass following and force real change. They have already expanded to 16 countries spread over 4 continents only within a time period of 6 months.

In a protest called “blood of our children” the EXTINCTION REBELLION planned to spill 500 liters of fake blood on downing street, the office and residence of the BRITISH PRIME MINISTER.

One of the excise co-founders Claire Farrell said that the idea of “BLOOD OF OUR CHILDREN” came when they felt a need to act to take control of the Climate change. The movement wanted to show the sufferings and killings of people due to the climate change.

The Extinction Rebellion had the 3 main demands-

1. For the govt to tell the truth to help communicate the crisis to the public

2. To reduce carbon emissions to net 0 by 2025

3. To achieve a structural Political change in the form of a citizen’s assembly where people’s knowledge and ideas are taken into consideration.

The EXTINCTION REBELLION didn’t stop there as they wanted to become impossible to ignore.

their BIGGEST PROTEST idea was to bring LONDON to a standstill with a two week HUMAN BLOCKADE of the city streets. The plan was to block the streets of the UK’s capital with walls of people.

They chain locked and glued themselves with the structures and even one another. These actions were deliberately planned to create maximum disruption and cause arrests.

On the day London’s major roads were human blocked by the activists of EXTINCTION REBELLION.

A few of the rebellions got arrested as they planned and they got exactly what they wanted.

More than 1000 arrests and 30000 new recruits later and with growing support across 33 countries the UK govt finally agreed to meet the extinction rebellion. On 1st May 2019 the HOUSE OF COMMONS made history by becoming the first national parliament in the world to declare a climate and ecological emergency.