Why My Family is Disrupting Routine for Climate Change
Next Friday, September 20, we are leaving school and work in the middle of the day to participate in the Global Climate Strike.
by Bethany Wiggin
When my family skips school or work, we don’t usually tell everyone. And I definitely don’t usually encourage my kids to skip. This is a real first for us. On Friday, September 20th, educators, students, and others from around the world are skipping together. Here in Philly, we’ll be at City Hall. We’re participating in the Global Climate Strike, and I hope you’ll consider striking too. I’m a Germantown Friends School (GFS) mom, parent of two boys, in 3rd and 7th grades. This climate protest isn’t their first rodeo, but I know they’d love to have their friends with them. At work, I’ve asked my colleagues to come; participants in a conference scheduled for September 20th and hosted by the academic program I direct at the University of Pennsylvania will join in too. So will tons of others, students and faculty from K-12 schools, colleges, and universities across the region.
Around the world, ever more individuals and institutions are understanding that the impacts of climate change don’t lie solely in the future. From ongoing ice melt at the poles to more severe rain events in Philadelphia, climate change is changing our here and now. From changes in the global climate system to the ongoing mass depletion of the biosphere (the sixth mass extinction event in planetary history), the human transformation of the earth system is so profound that researchers across academic disciplines posit that we have entered a new epoch of geologic time: the Anthropocene or the age of humans. We, differently and unevenly, have become geologic. It’s thus beyond time that we, and especially those with the means and privilege to do so, roll up our collective sleeves to create a more habitable future — for humans and nonhuman life too.
The School Strike movement, Fridays for Future, began with one plain-talking teen climate activist, Greta Thunberg. She insists, “Our house is on fire — let’s act like it.” In August 2018, Thunberg crafted a sign announcing her “school strike for climate” (Skolstrejk för Klimatet) and last August she started camping out on Fridays in front of the Swedish parliamentary building in her hometown of Stockholm. She was inspired by teen leaders in Florida who had called for school strikes against the gun violence that had ravaged their school, and so many others. Thunberg’s call for a strike went viral. Last fall, it was picked up by allied organizations, including 350.org and Extinction Rebellion. In March, U.N. Secretary General, António Guterres proclaimed his support for the kids. “No wonder they are angry,” he wrote in an essay in The Guardian, “These schoolchildren have grasped something that seems to elude many of their elders: we are in a race for our lives, and we are losing.”
In October 2018, the IPCC (the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), the body of the U.N. charged with assessing the science related to climate change, issued a Special Report about what Earth will be like if global warming exceeds 1.5 degree Celsius. (We’ve already warmed by more than one degree since the late 1800s.) If we continue to consume carbon at our present rate, we are on track to heat the planet by 4 degrees Celsius by 2100. No doubt you have heard what our carbon habits will do — and are doing — to global coastal cities from New York to Miami to Mumbai and beyond. Storms, like Dorian in the Bahamas, are now supercharged, and occurring with terrible frequency. Here in Philadelphia, even if we assume a scenario of moderate carbon cuts, by 2100 most of the airport and the nearby refinery complexes will be underwater; the Navy Yard will be submerged.
A few weeks ago, and for the first time in her life, Thunberg boarded a boat — and crossed the Atlantic Ocean. Her dad sailed with her on the zero-emission racing yacht, the Malizia II captained by Boris Herrmann. They reached New York on August 28th and have been striking on Fridays, with plenty of company, in front of the U.N. buildings ahead of the special U.N. Climate Action Summit, from September 21–23. As she announced on her twitter feed, she’ll also join the school strikers in Washington, D.C. on Friday the 13th in front of the White House.
As atmospheric CO2 levels reach levels previously unknown in human history, we humans are facing a whole bunch of terrible firsts: it’s the first time in millions of years that CO2 has passed 400 parts per million (in 2019 we’ve already reached above 415 ppm several times), the first time the U.S. has suffered three “500-year floods” in three consecutive years, etc. These conditions are prompting us to respond with our own firsts. Maybe you won’t board a boat for the first time and sail across the ocean. But maybe you’ll contribute #MyClimateStory to a collaborative public climate storytelling initiative we’ve just launched at Penn. Maybe you’ll also attend your first climate protest. Maybe you’ll even skip school on Friday the 20th, and maybe you too will explain to others why you’re striking school. Hope to see you there.
Bethany Wiggin is Associate Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures at the University of Pennsylvania and Founding Director of the Penn Program in Environmental Humanities. Bethany and her husband David Parker Helgerson are parents to third-grader Peter and seventh-grader Teddy. She can be reached at Bwiggin@sas.upenn.edu.
