Young Minnesotan helps organize US Youth Climate Strike

Today's post is about learning how to be, or at least behave, "better than this." For several days we've been fussing and fuming about what looked like a lack of participation by young people in the US in the growing international movement of school strikes for climate. We should have had more faith in our youth. After a limited beginning, the US school strike for climate is scheduled to expand on March 15 of this year. According to a story in the Washington Post, a New York teen "has joined forces with Haven Coleman, a 12-year-old striker from Colorado, and Isra Hirsi, the 15-year-old daughter of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), to organize the U.S. movement." We commend them all and thank them for their efforts to bring the rest of us to our senses. We are particularly delighted to see Minnesota well represented and showing some leadership on this issue.

THIS IS PLANET B
Image Credit: NASA/NOAA/GSFC/Suomi NPP/VIIRS/Norman Kuring

We're not sure what, if anything, it means, but our recollection of the early Vietnam War protests (yes, we are that old) was that many, perhaps most(?), of the participants were college age. Then again, many of the civil rights activists of the 1950s and '60s, such as the Little Rock Nine, were high school students.

Despite being a card-carrying member of the "Grumpy Old Men," we firmly disavow the concept that wisdom is ensconced only in society's elders. We live on a dynamic and changing planet in a dynamic and changing universe. We, and the rest of the current inhabitants of Earth, are facing challenges with catastrophic implications for the continuation of many species, including homo sapiens, if we do not transform our cultures and economies from a linear, once through, consumer focused model to a circular, regenerative, restorative model. Those embedded in a "we've never done it this way before" mindset may serve as dutiful followers but should not be allowed to serve as leaders. By coincidence, if you believe in coincidence, this morning we came across a set of recently developed resources on designing for the circular economy. They were created by IDEO and the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. We'd like to see more folks aware of these tools and how to use them, especially the "younger generation." Let's face it, they have much more to gain, or to lose, by getting the needed changes done effectively (doing the right things) and efficiently (doing things right) than do those of us who've been around for awhile.

All of the preceding now has us wondering what a democracy would look like, and how it would function, if that democracy's goals were set by the younger generation (reverting back to our college days, let's call it those who can be trusted, i.e., under thirty.) and responsibility for figuring out how to attain those goals became the responsibility of the older generations. After all, Adam and Eve were, presumably, adults and look where that's got us. On the other hand, many of our "founding fathers" were mere striplings. "Many of the Founding Fathers were under 40 years old at the time of the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776: Alexander Hamilton was 19, Aaron Burr was 20, Gouverneur Morris was 24." Think about that and consider how we can better honor the wisdom and integrity youth expresses through their honesty and impatience.

[Murmurs from the earth of this land]

By Muriel Rukeyser

Murmurs from the earth of this land, from the caves and craters,

       from the bowl of darkness. Down watercourses of our

       dragon childhood, where we ran barefoot.

We stand as growing women and men. Murmurs come down

        where water has not run for sixty years.

Murmurs from the tulip tree and the catalpa, from the ax of

        the stars, from the house on fire, ringing of glass; from

        the abandoned iron-black mill.

Stars with voices crying like mountain lions over forgotten

        colors.

Blue directions and a horizon, milky around the cities where the

        murmurs are deep enough to penetrate deep rock.

Trapping the lightning-bird, trapping the red central roots.

You know the murmurs. They come from your own throat.

You are the bridges to the city and the blazing food-plant green;

The sun of plants speaks in your voice, and the infinite shells of

        accretions

A beach of dream before the smoking mirror.

You are close to that surf, and the leaves heated by noon, and

        the star-ax, the miner’s glitter walls. The crests of the sea

Are the same strength you wake with, the darkness is the eyes

        of children forming for a blaze of sight and soon, soon,

Everywhere your own silence, who drink from the crater, the

        nebula, one another, the changes of the soul.

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