Environmentalism Goes Extreme As Teens Skip Classes In Global Climate 'Apocalypse' Rallies

As scores of students in Europe and the United States have recently started skipping classes on Fridays to rally for immediate action on climate change, some experts and politicians suggest that the topic has been taken to extremes, with the youth who is believed to be the main source of innovation and change being increasingly driven by doom theories

BRUSSELS (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 20th March, 2019) As scores of students in Europe and the United States have recently started skipping classes on Fridays to rally for immediate action on climate change, some experts and politicians suggest that the topic has been taken to extremes, with the youth who is believed to be the main source of innovation and change being increasingly driven by doom theories.

Over last few weeks in Western Europe and North America, every Thursday or Friday, tens of thousands of children have been walking out of classes and taking to the street to draw attention to the climate issues. Last Friday, for instance, demonstrations took place more in than 200 cities across the United States, as well as in Australia, the United Kingdom and other countries.

The growing movement, dubbed Fridays for Future, was inspired by Greta Thunberg, a Swedish teenager who has been demonstrating every Friday outside Sweden's parliament. Thunberg has even been reportedly nominated for the Nobel Peace prize by Norwegian lawmakers.

Such rallies are usually accompanied by non-governmental organizations and "Save the planet" groupings. Traditional parties, meanwhile, feel ill at ease with daring tell the kids that they should go back to school instead of happily demonstrating during lesson time.

These kids claim that "they stand to inherit a scorched Earth." They want a world that will not eat them alive, that will not boil their oceans and destroy their crops. They want a future; if they have to miss classes to get the adults to listen, they will.

"Do I need a diploma? Is it going to matter if I'm dead," a teen said at last week's demonstration in Paris.

Some of the youth groupings have revealing Names, such as "Youth versus Apocalypse." They want to raise awareness that climate change is real and cannot be ignored. "We only have 11 years until climate change is irreversible," another teen said at the same demonstration, where fear-mongering slogans were everywhere.

In Belgium, some secondary schools have even given the order to final year students to go and demonstrate. In a circular note to schools, the education minister of Federation Wallonia - Brussels, Marie-Martine Schyns, effectively allowed the unjustified absence of children from school.

"Although unjustified, on an exceptional basis, these absences will have no effect on the sanction of the school year of the students concerned, provided that they have been the subject of an agreement by the parents, or the pupil's legal guardians, so that a pupil cannot lose the quality of a regular pupil following the accumulation of absences related to the climate marches," the minister said.

In the United Kingdom, a government spokesperson, in contrast, reportedly criticized schoolchildren for wasting lesson time.

"Everybody wants young people to be engaged in the issues that affect them most ... But it is important to emphasise that disruption increases teacher's workloads and wastes lesson time," the spokesperson said.

The youth movement has not however confined itself to Friday rallies. In Belgium, for instance, 16-year-old activists who lead the movement, Anuna De Wever and Kyra Gantois, presented a new book: "We are the climate" on Monday, during a televised public debate. Every politician, from left to right, present joined a consensus about the need for a thorough energy renovation of buildings, hectares of extra green space, a faster "greening" of the fleet and better public transport.

"It is time the adults, particularly the politicians, take our future at heart. It is high time if we want to save the planet," the two youngsters said.

The protesting youth, coupled with environmentalists who beg us to eat less meat, forbid cars, not to use planes anymore and warn us that seawater will soon drown our coastal cities, paint a very dismal picture for the world.

The UN Climate Change Conferences, including the most famous one in Paris, concluded that the world had to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) or be anyway below the 2 degrees to avoid a catastrophe for the planet by 2100.

To this end, developed countries must invest 100 billion Euros ($114 billion) every year from 2020 on to prevent the environmental disaster, according to the experts.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warns that our CO2 emissions should reach an absolute ceiling in 2050 and rapidly decrease after that if we do not want the oceans to rise by 7 meters by the year 3000, submerging many coastal areas and countries. For scientists, "ecodirigism" becomes the rule and their warnings are getting more strident.

Green politicians all over Europe and the United States are supporting and often co-organizing the kids' marches, from San Francisco to Paris, to demand action immediately. In several countries, new "climate laws" are in preparation, which are aimed at dramatically increasing taxes on air transport, developing public transport versus individual cars and opposing every CO2 emission, including in cattle raising and agriculture.

YOUTH SHOULD NOT BELIEVE IN APOCALYPSE, MUST HAVE FAITH IN FUTURE

In Belgium, only the conservative-nationalist New Flemish Alliance (NVA), the largest party in the country, has opposed the hysteria and haste as being a solution to climate change problems.

According to the NVA leader and Antwerp mayor, Bart De Wever, the youth should not be driven by apocalyptic scenarios and go to extremes with their demands for climate cation.

"Young people should not believe in the apocalypse or in doom stories that demand unrealistic changes from humanity. I don't believe humanity is capable of changing its behavior. Concrete solutions will crop up but many are not there yet. If you should already feel guilty about going on a city trip by plane, then you are wrong," De Wever told Sputnik.

The politician believes that the youth "must have faith in the future and in the power of innovation" instead of "living in guilt and waiting for the apocalypse."

"Humanity has always found solutions through innovation. It is up to the generation of young people to study maths and physics at school in order to help provide solutions," he explained, adding that the "no future approach" and threat of economic doom "have poisoned many minds," especially among the younger generation.

The NVA leader stressed that the world needed technology that would bring major solutions to climate issues, especially in the energy transition, stressing that search for them would be a "positive story" in contrast to doom scenarios.

"The green story is: 'let us shrink the economy,' less, less, less and 'let us change our behavior,' but I don't think mankind will ever do that. Nuclear energy, for example, is indispensable if we are to reduce CO2 emissions and avoid the use of fossil fuels. We are going to need a lot of electricity to drive industrial processes and our electric vehicles. Excluding all sorts of options based on fantasies and saying that we can live on wind and sun is not realistic," he concluded.

Damien Ernst, an energy expert and professor at the University of Liege, believes that there is no real ground for pessimism, predicting that the present hysteria will soon stop.

"It is a flare-up that will not last. If we look at it from an optimistic angle, it is good that the younger generation understands a bit more the climate challenge, even if I am not too hopeful about the level of knowledge of the young demonstrators," Ernst told Sputnik.

The expert recalled that greenhouse gas reduction targets are in place and the industry works on it. He emphasized that political choices were also needed in terms of the energy we use but stressed that people could also contribute to solving climate challenges locally.

"We can all agree on better insulation for your houses and buildings. In Western Europe, each inhabitant emits 10 tonnes of CO2 per year. Housing is an important source of emissions because of heating, and it can be reduced, thanks to insulation, better ventilation, or better orientation," the professor said.

In general, Ernst warned against seeing some green technologies, such as electric cars, as panacea and warned against haste in tackling this sensitive issue.

"We have a European system of carbon pricing. It is not optimal, but it is a beginning, so the public should stop demanding the impossible. Governments, whatever their colour, are aware of necessities. It needs time. No reason to panic," said.

'POPULIST' PARTIES QUESTION CURRENT CLIMATE POLICIES

While the mainstream political forces in Europe embrace global climate goals and strategies, others, which are often branded as populists, oppose them, not least because of a shift of funds from the highly industrialized countries to underdeveloped countries, promoted as part of the solution.

The Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, for instance, rejects EU measures that justify the reduction of CO2 emissions by climate protection goals. According to the party, the trade in CO2 certificates should cease because it only further boosts energy prices.

For the AfD party, the decarbonisation, presented as the "Great Transformation of the Economy and Society," will not only reduce economic power for countries such as Germany and the other EU member states, but will create "zero growth and an economy of scarcity."

"The German government promotes its 2018 Climate Protection Report and boasts about the contribution of agriculture to greenhouse gas reduction in 2020. It imposes a massive increase in bureaucracy costs for the small and medium-sized family farms all over Germany. And the result announced is only between 0.65 and 2.3 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent per year. This roughly corresponds to the CO2 emissions caused by 70 return flights from Frankfurt to New York!" the agricultural policy spokesman for the AfD parliamentary group, Stephan Protschka, told Sputnik.

According to the party, the German government "strangles our agriculturalists."

"It kills small farms under mountains of administrative rubbish, for nothing, with families who never caused any environmental problems. This is utterly crazy and the result will be more farm closures," he opined.

Many other non-mainstream parties across Europe similarly doubt the need to urgently change the traditional energy mix, believing that main energy sources should be and remain gas, which emits little CO2, nuclear energy and some real renewable sources, such as hydro and solar power.

Moreover, some scientists agree that there is climate change and global warming but stress that it started more than 10,000 years ago, so probably there is no need to go to extremes in the fight against it.