Schools strike for climate

Today, all four of us attended the Schools Strike for Climate protest rally in Aotea Square, Auckland.

We're 100% supportive of those involved in this strike/protest.

First off, there is overwhelming evidence that climate change is real, humans caused it, and it is going to continue into the future.

Those who wish to deny this, or who wish to sit on the fence about it, are not on the side of best evidence and reasoning.

The current best evidence also points to the future being pretty bad for us humans unless we do something about it.  The Earth is okay, it will survive, but there is a good chance that a lot of humans won't.

Unfortunately, doing something about this problem is going to cost money, and currently those around the world with power (both politically and economically) are reluctant to lose a tiny slice of their current good life.  They prioritise their own comfort and ease in the present over the wellbeing of all our children and grandchildren in the future.

So, as is so often the case, the only way to make those in power give up a bit of their selfish comforts is for enough people to gather together and make enough noise about it.

So, here we were, making as much noise as we could.

(Personally, I feel very uncomfortable in noisy crowds, and I feel even more uncomfortable shouting out in crowds.  But every small contribution matters, and our little family added four extra bodies to the crowds.)

This protest was organised by school students and attended primarily by school students.  They were knowingly leaving school during school hours to do this.

Consequently, some educationalists were critical of the school students.  The main argument I hear from these educationalists is that these students are wasting lesson and teaching time.

This argument by these educationalists is very weak.  Let me tell a story:

As I said here before, this summer I have been involved with our athletics club, volunteering to help about 20 or so schools with their athletics sports days at the athletics club grounds.

Some schools have small athletics days, while some have bigger productions.  The biggest production by far was Westlake Girls High School.  All 2200 students attended the day.  They had several portaloos delivered the day before.  They had an ex-netballer/TV presenter on microphone duties.  They were sponsored by a car company, who required that we open the gates early so they could drive a car onto the grounds and have a promotional photo-shoot.  The 2200 students' morning "warm-up" consisted of them congregating around the finish line and doing zumba to loud music from a sound system brought in by the school (damaging the grass athletics track in the process).  Many of the students were in fancy dress rather than athletics attire, and some were waddling rather than athletically running.  Others were not involved at all, merely sitting around having a day off school.

I say all of this because I am convinced that there was far less learning happening throughout many of these school athletics days than happened at the strike/protest.  Surely yearly corporate sponsorship and social events are a greater waste of school lesson/teaching time than students gathering together for one afternoon to collectively ask to save our children.

I don't say stop the athletics day.  I just call out those anti-strike educationalists as talking nonsense.

Our little family caught the bus to the protest rally, along with plenty of school students in school uniform.  We stayed in Aotea Square for about an hour before catching an emptier bus home again.

Because we went to the rally, Mulan and Miya didn't do their weekly piano lesson with Nainai.  We decided that joining the protest was more important (their piano learning is very relaxed, and they'd only had their first lesson last Friday as Nainai has already canceled a few lessons this term when she wasn't feeling energetic enough to teach).  But we left the protest early to get to the girls' weekly swimming lesson.  We decided that swimming was more important (they have the homeschoolers swimming sports day next Wednesday, and also this is a paid lesson).

Were we inconsistent in our actions?  Certain extended family members told us we were.

I don't believe we were.  In life, we need to be wise with respect to how much time we spend on ourselves and how much time we spend on others.  We need to be generous with our time, but not stingy on the one hand or extravagant on the other.

Our family recognised that it was important to be a small part of the crowd at the protest rally, playing our small part to help others.  How much did us being there help?  Most likely very little, but a bit.  But we also recognised that we have our own life and interests.  Consistency doesn't require us to go to the extreme of either (a) only attending the protest and cancelling all our classes, or (b) attending all our classes and not going to the protest rally.  It is okay to be a bit more subtle in weighing up the value of our competing activities, and do a bit of both.

And you never know, there is a very small chance that my writings here might be read by someone who will then be inspired to think a bit more about climate change.  I want them to be encouraged that every little bit helps, but they don't need to give up their entire life for the cause.  Do what you can, and please put yourself out to help others, but don't feel guilty if and when you also have your you-time.