Call For Action on Sept. 23rd Global Climate Strike
September 15, 2022
(From press release)
Dear Community Members.
Three years ago, in September of 2019, Davis participated in the first Global Climate Strike with nearly 2000 youth and adults alike demanding climate action. This year, Fridays For Future Davis is inviting you to join us again to fight for all of our future. On September 23rd 2022 at 11am we will march from E 14th and B Street down to Central Park. We are asking students across Davis to walk out of school and adults to walk out of work and join this international movement to demand we have a livable future.
At the 2019 school strike for climate action we delivered a letter of climate action demands to the Davis City Council and DJUSD, and since then not one of our demands for climate action have been met. We, the youth and Davis community, will not stand for this.
Elected officials are holding our future in their hands and it is up to them whether we will have a livable planet or not. But it is up to us to tell them when it is time to act, and it is past that time. The Earth’s clock is ticking. We cannot and will not wait until 2035 or 2030 or even 2025 for change to come. We will not wait any longer.
This September you can be part of this international school walkout and strike to show the world that we will not give up on our future and we will not back down.
Every year we, as Californians, suffer from climate change like everyone else around the world. We face record breaking drought, heat, fires and toxic air pollution from the smoke. We all suffer from this and it cannot be ignored any longer. Across the globe natural disasters are displacing millions of people and taking countless lives.
Will you watch this all happen and go on with normal life and with your usual Friday activities? Or will you show up to this strike and demand climate justice for all people and for the children of this Earth whose futures’ we are fighting for? This is not an easy task by any means. Climate anxiety is real. But this will not just magically disappear if we ignore it. It will get worse and worse. How will you feel if in 20 years you cannot say you tried to save the world? But what if you do try by showing up to strike and bringing your friends, classmates, coworkers and family?
This is our safe space to feel the grief and anxiety brought about by the climate emergency and our space to act accordingly and make change.
Together we stand, united and strong. Unwilling to back down or be told there is no hope. There is still hope and strength in numbers. You have an opportunity to be written into the history books and there are two ways you can be remembered. You will either be remembered as one who tried and saved the children from the climate crisis, or you will be remembered as someone who sat by and did nothing.
We can do this if we unite under one banner that says ‘Climate Justice Now’. Join us at E 14th and B Street at 11am on September 23rd to show the world that Davis is united and will not be left behind.
For more information and updates on upcoming Fridays For Future Davis events, check out our Instagram @fridaysforfuture_davis and email us with any questions at davis@fridaysforfutureusa.org
For more national and international information about the Fridays For Future movement please visit fridaysforfuture.org or fridaysforfutureusa.org
It's good to make the air cleaner. Let's not break our city state and country in doing so because we won't make a dent if other countries are going massively in the other direction. All it will do is enrich those in the Climate Change Industrial Complex. I suggest y'all ADAPT, because you can talk all you want about how China is saying nice things -- the FACT is they are continuing to build coal plants, and those will be furthering the degradation of the atmosphere for the rest of your lives and your children's lives. All this time wasted on trying to remove a single fly from the back of a fly-infested horse will not save the horse. The world must collectively ADAPT. We humans already did the damage over the past 200 years, and we continue to fly jets in the high atmosphere because we want to go places fast. Stop doing that and I'll listen to you. But we just went through the biggest shutdown of transportation ever - the pandemic - and we still got our 116° record-ever-high in Sacramento. And movement is back to nearly pre-pandemic levels, except a lot LESS people are taking public transit, already started by Uber/Lyft shifts pre-pandemic. The Earth has already spoken, 'you broke me' and we have to ADAPT. Yes, cleaner air is a good thing, but Davis or the United States being converted to some Sacrificial Messiah in the hopes the other countries will follow -- well, we aren't already, we won't turn the ship for decades, it won't make a difference, and the damage has already been done, and we fly in jets because we like to so we're all hypocrites except that one European teenager person. God bless her for trying. And so who benefits? The Climate Change Industrial Complex. For the rest of us: move north and stay away from low elevations. See you at the march! Or not . . .
Posted by: Alan C. Miller | September 18, 2022 at 09:42 AM
"All this time wasted on trying to remove a single fly from the back of a fly-infested horse will not save the horse."
Alan, that's an excellent analogy. While people virtue signal in Davis and the U.S. the rest of the world is carrying on as usual, building even more coal plants. So we ruin our economy and pay through the nose for energy for what? Feel good?
Posted by: Keith | September 19, 2022 at 09:35 AM
Here's how I see things. I've watched all of the predictions I first heard about in the 90s come to pass, except they've all been on the worst end of the scale. You think our recent heatwaves, floods, fires, droughts, etc., have been bad? You ain't seen nothing yet. Things are only going to get worse -- much worse -- from here and there is nothing to stop or slow that process except us putting dramatically much less carbon into the air. We have scrogged the planet. We are royally fucked unless we do something dramatic.
Who is to blame? Well, we can point fingers where we like and there is certainly a lot to go around, but the U.S. is responsible for more than its share of it. We've played the "we're not going to do anything about it until everyone else does" game and this is where it has gotten us. We have to stop playing that game. The opportunities for success here are frankly thin and so yes, we have to pull some Hail Marys, we have to put ourselves out, because that is all that it is in our power to do.
And I do think that Davis can make a difference. Every policy decision I have been involved in starts with "what are other cities doing?" It's not that Davis is some big shining light that other cities look at so much as it is that cities influence other cities just like individuals influence other individuals. It's a long shot, but we can do our part and do our best to bring others along. Really, we have no damn choice other than to party like it's 2022 and kiss the future goodbye, prepared to off ourselves when things get really bad. Because they will. We need to stop dithering.
Posted by: Roberta L. Millstein | September 19, 2022 at 08:19 PM
"I've watched all of the predictions I first heard about in the 90s come to pass, except they've all been on the worst end of the scale."
The predictions I first heard about were the coming ice age and global cooling in the 70's.
Posted by: Keith | September 20, 2022 at 07:52 AM
We've played the "we're not going to do anything about it until everyone else does" game and this is where it has gotten us. We have to stop playing that game. The opportunities for success here are frankly thin and so yes, we have to pull some Hail Marys
I used to be one of the those people who picked up every tiny scrap of paper, to an obsessive degree, and made sure it got in the recycle bin. Then, at age 16 I went to work for Kinko's in the 1970s. At our new branch at least they threw all the paper in the trash! I convinced them to recycle all their paper. Then I kept recycling myself, but I stopped spending time finding every scrap in the house. One fly on a horse.
I used to be one of those people who obsessively saved every drop of water, ran to turn off a faucet or a hose to save a few more drops. Then in college I went to work in an ag department and went out to farm fields and watched ditches inundating acres with precious water. I don't run for the faucet anymore. One fly on a horse.
I'm all for burning less carbon, but government is getting way over its skis in so many ways. And there are 'entrepreneurs' (the Climate Industrial Complex) seeing it coming and all ready to lap up the spoils -- about green money, not green energy. Too, there is so much environmental damage and economic ruin on the table as the head sees the snow coming as the skis snap off their boot mounts.
Posted by: Alan C. Miller | September 20, 2022 at 08:27 AM
"Climate anxiety is real."
Trump Derangement Syndrome is real.
Posted by: Alan C. Miller | September 20, 2022 at 08:27 AM
Keith, in the 1970s a small number of scientists postulated global cooling and that was taken up by the press, even as more scientists of the day were postulating global warming. Today something like 99% of climate scientists find the evidence for global warming to be overwhelming. And again, those of us who have been adults for the last 20-30 years can see that for ourselves. It’s just not the same thing at all. Scientists do hypothesize and sometimes they are mistaken, but it is rare to have this much consensus.
Posted by: Roberta L. Millstein | September 20, 2022 at 10:57 AM
Alan, I agree that there is only so much an individual can do by changing their personal behavior. But citywide policies can, I believe, make a difference, as I said in my previous comment, by helping to spur change in other cities and states as well as nationwide. And had all of the Kinko's adopted that policy (they probably have by now) that too, I believe, makes a difference. So IMO the most important thing that individuals can do is to push for larger changes. But “use less” is always a good option, one that gets lost in the push for a green economy. Like you, I am concerned about that. We have to change our technologies but we also have to change our growth and consumptive behavior.
Posted by: Roberta L. Millstein | September 20, 2022 at 11:03 AM
I think Kinko's was recycling everywhere by the late 70's. I don't take credit as I think it was being pushed generally, but I got our store to adopt it sooner.
I wasn't being flippant about the TDS comment. I was certain those on the left would catch on what Trump was doing to them. It's an old trick -- you get people upset in order to control them. This works on an individual level and on a global level. But instead hoards of people got more upset, and Trump kept upsetting them and then laughing as he controlled the narrative. A jerk like Trump should never have been president -- and I blame those too blind to see how he gained control over them.
Similarly I believe the climate debate has become too emotional. Once "climate change" is evoked, rather than simply cleaning the air, we lose focus. We should push incentives, but not to the point the solution is worse than the problem. Electric cars are no panacea, and they are still CARS with all the inherent bad land use that surrounds single occupancy powered vehicles, and that power is not clean. I'm for a whole new paradigm beyond cars as city design. Electric cars are not helping in that.
Posted by: Alan C. Miller | September 20, 2022 at 12:16 PM
I want to separate two issues: climate anxiety and what we should do about the climate. I think that anyone who isn’t anxious about our immediate, near, and less near future is deceiving themselves or not fully versed in what is going on. Sometimes anxiety is the rational emotional reaction. I do believe that we are royally screwed with the thinnest of hopes for improving the situation, but it is that thin hope that I think we must aim for.
That doesn’t mean that we can’t be clear-eyed about what the best solutions are. I agree that not all proposed solutions are good ones. For example, I have a 22 year old car that I drive maybe about 2000 miles per year, if that. It is my view that the carbon and resources expended for me to get a new electric car are greater than the carbon and resources expended for me to drive my old car. But for many other cases electric cars do make sense. So we need policies that actually solve the problems they are intended to solve. Indeed our dire situation make that more urgent, not less urgent.
Posted by: Roberta L. Millstein | September 20, 2022 at 02:56 PM
And yes, alternatives to cars would be even better. Agreed 100%.
Posted by: Roberta L. Millstein | September 20, 2022 at 02:57 PM
A lot of local action makes things more convivial, pleasant and safe... locally... without regard to specific climate benefits.
Posted by: Todd Edelman | September 23, 2022 at 12:40 PM
Fully in your camp, Roberta. And won't stop aiming for that thin hope until my last breath. Kind of why I spent two hours this morning picking up trash around Sutter Hospital with Davis Picks It Up. Maybe one less piece of plastic for a sea turtle to swallow.
https://www.worldwildlife.org/stories/what-do-sea-turtles-eat-unfortunately-plastic-bags
Posted by: Janet Krovoza | September 24, 2022 at 12:15 PM