But activists ask: Will the declarations change anything? Not fast enough, according to Dr. José Hernández Ayala.
Hernández Ayala, a climate scientist at Sonoma State University, compared the county’s recent emergency declaration to a New Years Resolution and noted the goals set are not sufficiently urgent.
“We’re saying we’re not going to eat as much and we’re going to do a lot of exercise,” he says. “We make all of these promises that we really want to be reality but, at the end of the day, there’s nothing really forcing us to actually achieve those things.”
The Sunrise Movement, a national organization with regional chapters which organized strikes nationwide, advances the idea of shaming politicians into taking immediate action on climate change. Politicians, they argue, are negligent in sitting idly by while the earth continues to heat, setting off a chain of negative consequences.
Christine Byrne, organizer of the Sunrise Movement’s Sonoma County Hub, says the current crop of climate activists is more prone to anger than previous generations of activists.
Byrne says they should keep the focus on systemic change, with a focus on those profiting from carbon emissions.
In 2017, a report by the nonprofit CDP concluded that just 100 companies are accountable for 71 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions since 1988.
“It’s good for us in our individual lives to take some ownership [for our lifestyles.] … but more and more, especially young people, are recognizing that they as individuals did not create this problem,” Byrne says. Instead, a select group of businesses and the politicians who enable them are to blame.
That causes anger among young people who realize they will live with the cascading damage of climate change for the rest of their lives.
https://pacificsun.com/climate-resolution/
