“As the Oceans Rise, So Will We”

I used to find kids really fucking annoying. Not as annoying as mosquitoes or Nigel Farage’s voice or a flu that you just can’t seem to shake after two and half weeks, but still pretty annoying.

Catching the bus at about quarter to four in the afternoon is a precarious decision for someone of this persuasion and many times I have found myself sat alone at the back, silently pleading in my mind that the gaggle of school girls who’ve just invaded the vehicle don’t find their way back to my backseat sanctuary.

But they always do.

What follows is often my desperate swiping through my phone looking for something ear-shatteringly heavy to blast through my headphones in order to drown out the incessant squawks and shrieks of post-school freedom. Something by Marilyn Manson or Run The Jewels often does the trick, and I try to aim my gaze at the furthest object I can see through the window and think of England.

However, my mind has been changed.

On the 15^th of February, school pupils from around the UK and Europe went on strike against the lack of action on climate change from governments across the globe. Following on from successful strikes in Australia, Belgium, Germany and Switzerland, the strike marked the first YouthStrike4Climate event in the UK and was attended by thousands of politically engaged youngsters looking to have their voices heard.

“Fuck yes” I thought as I read the reports and articles slowly dripping in throughout the day. “These annoying little bastards are starting to want to be heard, good on ‘em” I thought, scrolling through pictures of homemade signs that read things like “Our Planet, Our Future”, “Green Or We R Fucked”, “As the Oceans Rise, So Will We” and my personal favourite “It’s Getting Hot In Here, So Take Of All Your Coals.”

Genius.

As I looked through the images of the strikes, I couldn’t help but feel an overwhelming sense of pride in these people I’d once actively avoided, “Look at ‘em go!” It’d taken me until around my 20^th year on this planet before I attended my first protest, and yet here they were, a lot of them still fresh into their teens, giving the curriculum the finger to go block roads and shout politics in the name of a cause they’ve been forced to inherit. Bloody inspiring.

Take Greta Thunberg, for example. Miss Thunberg is a 16-year-old climate activist who has taken it upon herself to skip school every Friday since August to instead go and picket outside the Swedish parliament, calling out the inaction of her government over climate change. She even spoke in front of an audience at the UN Climate Change Conference in December, blasting policy makers several times her senior by saying, “Since our leaders are behaving like children, we will have to take the responsibility they should have taken long ago.”

The strikes in the UK, inspired by Greta’s actions, were organised by three climate pressure groups; Youth Strike 4 Climate, the UK Youth Climate Coalition and the UK Student Climate Network, which the Guardian reports has members in around 30 towns across the country.

The actions of these pupils were also supported by a still noticeably small number of politicians from several parties including Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, Caroline Lucas of the Green Party and Conservative energy minister Claire Perry, with Corbyn tweeting his support by claiming that young people were “right to feel let down by the generation before them and it’s inspiring to see them making their voice heard today.”

Predictably, however, there were those who felt otherwise.

In what is best described as a succinct admission of their just “not getting it,” a spokesperson for No 10 chimed in that, “It is important to emphasise that disruption increases teachers’ workloads and wastes lesson time that teachers have carefully prepared for. That time is crucial for young people, precisely so that they can develop into the top scientists, engineers and advocates we need to help tackle this problem.” 

Wait, what?

Up until this point I’d thought that the ENTIRE FUCKING POINT of the protest was so that they WOULD NOT have to be “the top scientists, engineers and advocates” that get tasked with fixing a problem they had almost nothing to do with causing. But now I’m unsure, dear spokesperson, as to what exactly YOU think you’re saying, because it sounds a little bit like “yeah, we fucked it, kids. Climate change is gunna reeeeeally hurt you, better stay in school and work out how to fix the mess we made!”

Maybe I’m being paranoid. Quite possibly. But there is now nothing I wouldn’t put past the pathetic herd of career politicians and ideological spastics we find ourselves being governed by in this country. The fact that we have school children that now talk more sense than politicians is a terrifying sign of where we’re at, and where we might go.