Guest blogger Alec Loorz is a high school junior in Ventura, California. He has been a climate change activist for three years and has spoken to over 50,000 people in more than 150 talks nationwide. He founded the nonprofit Kids vs Global Warming (KvGW) at age 13, and currently runs the iMatter campaign.
I am 16 years old. This week I filed a lawsuit against the United States of America, for allowing money to be more powerful than the survival of my generation, and for making decisions that threaten our right to a safe and healthy planet.
Our parents’ and grandparents’ generation has created a problem. They’ve developed a society that depends on burning fossil fuels, like coal and oil, to survive. They never realized that there were any huge consequences to running our lives with fossil fuels. But now, we do.
Our addiction to fossil fuels is messing up the perfect balance of nature and threatening the survival of my generation.
If we continue to hide in denial and avoid taking action, I and my generation will be forced to grow up in a world where hurricanes as big as Katrina are normal, people die every year because of heat waves, droughts, and floods, and entire species of animals we’ve come to know disappear right before our eyes.
This is not the future I want. And I know that we still have a chance to turn this picture around. But, it’s going to take more than changing light bulbs and buying hybrid cars. I believe it will take nothing less than a revolution… a revolution in our entire culture and way of thinking, so that we value nature and the future of my generation with every action we take.
And I believe this revolution needs to be led by youth. It’s our future we’re fighting for, and we are some of the most creative, dedicated, and passionate people on the planet. We have the moral authority to look into our parents and leaders eyes and ask them, “Do I matter to you?”
Also, as youth, we are the last group of people in the US who don’t have any official political rights. We can’t vote, we certainly can’t compete with rich corporate lobbyists… So we are forced to simply trust our government to make good decisions on our behalf.
However, it’s become clear that our government has failed us, by not protecting the resources on this planet we need to survive. Even though scientists overwhelmingly agree that CO2 emissions are totally messing up the balance of our atmosphere, our leaders continue to turn their backs on this crisis.
The time has come for the youngest generation to hold our leaders accountable for their actions.
Today, I and other fellow young people are suing the government, for handing over our future to unjust fossil fuel industries, and ignoring the right of our children to inherit the planet that has sustained all of civilization. I will join with youth and attorneys in every state in the US to demand that our leaders to live and govern as if our future matters.
The government has a legal responsibility to protect the future for our children. So we are demanding that they recognize the atmosphere as a commons that needs to be preserved, and commit to a plan to reduce emissions to a safe level.
The plaintiffs and petitioners on all the cases are young people. We are standing up for our future.
But we will not only stand up in the courts. We will stand up in the streets as well.
Starting this Mothers’ Day weekend, the youngest generation will rise up and march in our communities. We will unite together with a powerful voice to call for action on climate change, and demand that our society lives as if our future matters.
We will let the world know that climate change is not about money, it’s not about power, it’s not about convenience. It’s about our future. It’s about the survival of this and every generation to come.
The iMatter March is a series of more than 100 marches in states all across the US, and in over 25 countries worldwide, including Columbia, Gambia, Germany, Thailand India, on Mount Everest (!!!) and there’s even one being planned by the son of an oil executive in Kuwait.
And it’s about more than just these events. This is a movement. A mass movement of young people standing up with a unified voice to tell the ruling generation that we will no longer just sit idly by as they make decisions that threaten our future. We matter. Our future matters.
Thomas Jefferson once said, “Every generation needs a new revolution.” Well this is ours. The time has now come for the youngest generation to make a stand for our future.
This is our revolution. This is our time.
– Alec Loorz
Editor’s Note: For information on where marches are schedueld and how to join them, go to http://imattermarch.org.
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Great job Alec! Beautifully-written! In addition to great one-day events like yours and those of the 350 folks led by Bill McKibben, you might consider refusing to drive as I did at your age (I’m sorry to say I gave in and got my first car just before I turned 26 – big mistake) and as my college student daughter has done. You can social network and chose colleges and other places to live that don’t require cars.
This will create bonds like few things can (as I’ve experienced biking from Canada to Mexico and living in the bike-friendliest places like Boulder, Santa Monica and Portland). After a period of driving around many elders, disabled and legendary scientists I’m working to re-join you in this goal!
Alec,
Congratulations for having such a clear-headed grasp of the threat to your future and its primary cause–Man’s heedless use of fossil fuels. I urge you to research the psychological factors that encourage humans to deny that humans cause climatic change or even that it exists.
The following citations, which appear on my Quantum Fires “premise” page, present the scientific facts of how humans turn off the logical part of our brains–our dorsolateral prefrontal cortext–to instead ‘think’ with out emotions when confronted by truths we’d rather not face. (My blog explores the climatic change implications of this tendency).
A psychologist in Chicago, Dr. Sarah Warren, also uses her expertise to battle climate change. I think she’d be very happy to help your efforts.
Good luck in all you do, and don’t hesitate to let me know if I can help you. I’m on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
Cordially yours,
James Kelly
1) Westen D, Blagov PS, Harenski K, Kilts C, Hamann S., Neural bases of motivated reasoning Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience. 11/06;18(11):1947-58.
) Political bias affects brain activity MSNBC.com, Jan 24 2006
Alec,
May I add my name to those who applaud you for an excellent post?
Over here in Wales, we notice a similar thing, with our younger people most certainly “getting it” with respect to the risks of climate destabilisation, and it reminds me of my youth back in the 70s and 80s, when we were aghast at the glib way in which nuclear weapons were being deployed and once again the vast majority of vociferous commentators supporting the same were men in their latter years. It is often the younger generation that has the energy to fight against the twin evils of paranoia and complacency with respect to any real threat. You have taken on a hard fight, but a righteous one. I am so very encouraged to see this.
I wish you well.
John
PS – I see the BBC has run the story too.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/richardblack/2011/05/generation_climate_game.html
A word of advice regarding the BBC comments section, if I may. It has become one of the worst denialist troll-nests on the Internet. Do not be disheartened by some of the comments, in other words. There are several individuals who see fit to post utter crap every time they have an opportunity to do so (indeed, it may be their day-job). They are a waste of time in terms of engaging. I’ve tried and had my rebuttals deleted on many occasions – and I’m no monster!
Really, when somebody is being weapons-grade stupid, it should be possible to point that out. Not in this case…..
Cheers – John
Thank you Alec, for making your voice heard.
I will be in Hartford CT tomorrow at noon.
The law suit you should be filing would be against your school for teaching you pseudoscience and Al Gore’s magic CO2 religion in place of the scientific method. You are parroting media hype about tornadoes and floods as if anything today is historically unusual when there’s no shred of evidence that it is, other than the increased population. In fact, if we had many of the severe weather years of centuries ago, given our huge population increases, we’d have far greater numbers of dead.
CO2 is but a tiny insignificant portion of Earth’s greenhouse gasses, which is virtually entirely water vapor. Earth’s climate is almost entirely a function of the balance between water and the sun’s variable output. The only other factor is geology, heat from the earth’s interior, volcanism, and continental drift altering wind patterns. The CO2 is entirely irrelevant.
You are preaching a religion, promoted by con-men and frauds. There is no science behind it.
I’d also like to offer by support to Alec in any way he’d like. I’m at rabrenne@hotmail.com, Alec.
I would like to offer a note of caution about lionizing any generation and demonizing any other. Obviously Alec is at the extreme of awareness and communication for his age, and whenever any of us hang out with exceptional populations of any kind is it easy for us to mistakenly think that the exception is the norm, when unfortunately it isn’t. That might be an ongoing temptation for some 350 folks.
My guess is that every age bracket now is consuming more than the same age bracket was consuming decades ago both globally and nationally, so no age bracket is heroic as of yet; we all need to improve.
And after speaking, producing, moderating and attending hundreds of hours of climate change and related events on and around college campuses, I can’t help noticing that the average age of attendees has been over 50 despite countless attempts to involve students and breathless encouragement and pauses to allow them to speak. Only when the event is a class assignment have college students out-numbered their elders at such events. If one were to objectively gauge where the time, energy and interest of the current generation of college students mostly lies, I’m afraid that right now climate change and related Anthro-Earth issues would be well down the list. (Any polls, studies or educated guesses about this including the entire college-age population, and not just the population in a particular climate change or environmental studies class?)
No generation has been told they’re as brilliant as the current young by as many people including well-meaning but ill-advised parents and teachers and especially insidiously by advertisers who have used countless hours of electronic access in part to tell the young how brilliant they are and how stupid everyone old is. This happens in large part because the young buy a lot more than the old and are still developing what can often be decades-long brand loyalties. Such brainwashing appears to affect all ages, but the young appear to be assaulted most (again, any polls, studies, educated guesses – Merrelyn?)
In seeking those who get the big picture best, I’ve found the vast majority are over 50, including the most complete and impressive commenters here. Unfortunately like Alec they’re the tiniest percentage of the overall population in their age range, but at least in their cases I can’t help thinking that maybe there is something to the wisdom of elders that every society in human history and pre-history has known except ours.
I say this to my own 16 year old daughter as well as the global youth movement.
I believe this will become the biggest popular movement in the history of the world. It must – it is civil rights for all future generations, an environmental, a jobs movement, a women’s and children’s movement.
When I asked to speak at the Denver march, I was told it would be young people speaking … I hear Governor Hickenlooper might speak – yet he is busy turning the Governor’s energy office into a gas, oil and nuclear research center.
I ask the young of this generation to listen to my generation as well, to give us a seat at the table, as we have much to share. We blockaded the logging roads to save the ancient forest – for you. When Reagan joked he was going to begin bombing the USSR in five minutes gathered by the million and pounded with hammers on nuclear warheads – for you, still yet to be born. And we carried you, babes in arms, to stop the World Trade Organization from taking away environmental laws, and to stop the oil wars.
For you, now, we have much to share. We faced smear campaigns, attempts to provoke us to violence, and attacks with fists, tear gas, nand car bombs. We were written out of the media, discounted, made fun of, considered a “lifestyle”. Though you will learn for yourselves, we can at least prepare you for these tactics.
This is a movement about solutions – we do not just march against something, we march for something – the right of communities to take back our sources of power, both electrical and political. We need you on the roofs with solar panels as much as on the streets with protest signs.
We are proud, proud, proud to have raised you so well, and that you are waking us up, again, to our sense of purpose.
Bravo Alec! Well said. Your generation and all future generations matter.
Keep up the good fight.
Well written, Alec. Stick with it, you’ll make a difference. Please tell us as much as you can about this lawsuit — is it class action, who are the attorneys, etc.
I’ll second John Mason’s advice about comments on the BBC blogs. That seems to be true of many newspapers’ blogs. Being open, they fall prey to certain people who delight in spewing drivel. You can’t engage them successfully; they ignore the content of replies, always determined to have the last word even if it’s nonsensical.
When I comment on such blogs, I try to remember the undecided lurkers who might read my posts. It holds the ranting to a lower pitch. :)
For #6, Will James:
Which oil/gas company is paying you to defuse climate change blogs with your outdated lies?
And for the record, I’m a geologist, a scientist, one who studies and uses science for a living.
Addendum for Will James: continental drift altering wind patterns? continental drift, or, as we who are current in the field call it, tectonics, take millions of years. Who’s the one who needs to study science and the scientific method? Absurd.
Too bad William James (if that’s his real name) has to mess up a great essay by an inspired young person. Fantastic job, Alec; you put most of us old fogies to shame. But you’re absolutely right that it’s your generation that will have to deal with the mess we’ve left you. And I might add that my generation might not have know what we were doing when we were your age, but there was no excuse for continuing down our path to catastrophe once it started to become clear in the 1970s what our fossil fueled industrial civilization was actually doing to the atmosphere. Of course we already knew what we were doing to the general biosphere way back in the days of John Muir and the vast majority of us still didn’t pay any attention as “Mr. James” so assuredly proves. Again, well done Alec and good luck to you in your efforts! We’re all going to need it.
Re: #7, Richard Brenne, asking where the climate change issue ranks on the list among the college-age population:
About 80% care about climate change, reduce GHGs (marginally) & may support significant policy change.
About 20% have studied it beyond the Inconvenient Truth.
About 5% actively study the issues and participate in rallies.
About 0.5% actually comprehend the magnitude of the issue — and are torn between hoping/waiting for the big crash and/or Revolution (but real, actual, bloody revolution beyond iMatter sign-holding and slactivism).
(And for what it’s worth, for ya’ll to gauge my bias, I think about 20% of Climate Progress readers/commenters actually comprehend climate change and the rest are lulled by renewable energy techno-fantasies)
This is based on my experience at the University of Colorado at Boulder in the Environmental Studies and Political Science departments, and at Vermont Law School.
Alec: Hooray for you and your efforts. You have probably done more to effect a positive change in the world than 99.99% of the rest of us.
Thank you for walking the walk, not just talking the talk.
Alec, I was as young as you when I read Rachel Carson and her words were new to me and to the world. This battle for the future’s well being has been going on for quite some time now. It’s quite a multi-generational thing, like building one of Europe’s great cathedrals. It won’t be over anytime soon but it’s the fight worth waging. A world without a human presence is no future at all.
You are doing the right thing. Don’t stop!
Worrybug (#14) – I’m sure we know many of the same people, or at least bugs. In 2008 I produced and moderated a series of events about Climate Change and related issues like Peak Oil at the University of Colorado. During the day I would run into undergraduates and ask them “Are you interested in Climate Change?” or Peak Oil and when they’d say “not really” I’d joke, “Unfortunately, you will be.”
Since the U.S. census figures for both 15 to 19 and 20 to 24 are around 21,500,000 each, for 18 to 22 the figure must be comparable and thus at 5% over 1 million college-age students (whether in college or not) would be actively studying the issue and attending rallies. That sounds like it might be consistent with 350′s experience.
Also the 0.5% figure of those who understand the magnitude of the problem would mean over 100,000 college-age students.
Those and your other figures sound entirely reasonable to me. I guess the only question is, how can we grow those numbers? If there were a draft where young people fought events like Katrina, the Alabama tornadoes and floods that resulted in at least one mandatory year of service and God forbid 58,000 dead and over half a million injured, there would then be all the activism there was in the 1960s, hopefully more. But how do we get there in a positive way? Ideas?
William James
Thank you for your comment. At least now we know how utterly and amazingly wrong the thinking of so called skeptics can be. You call AGW a religion while displaying your own belief in a bunch of memes, from the skeptic littany of urban legends about climate change, that are demonstrably false, through and through.
“No science behind it”
Hate to tell you, but the greenhouse effect has been known since 1824, and proven in 1859, and further quantified in 1896. The IPCC’s AR4 report from 2007 is based on 10,000 research papers, mostly peer reviewed, that then went through 4 more levels of review at the IPCC by 2,500 scientists. Every national academy of science in the world agrees with it. Maybe they should have checked with you. So far, observations have shown that 2007 report as being too conservative.
“CO2 is but a tiny insignificant portion of Earth’s greenhouse gasses”
It is hard to believe that anyone can be so ignorant of basic physics.
Great job, Alec! We’ll be in San Francisco tomorrow…
Good work Alec and I like the website too.
I noticed that you are set up as a non-profit which means you probably have had to be organized with a conventional board structure, chair etc. You can make this work cooperatively while you remain small but if you grow, and you probably will, this structure will get in the road of your energy and enthusiasm. You must continue to work as a group or groups if you want to retain those properties.
We have found a legal way to get around the divisive effects of this mandated structure which is to write into your constitution a para up the front which says that all decisions will be first considered and made by the rationalization of conflict. Voting then becomes necessary only if this method fails which it very rarely or never does.
There is a fairly simple write up of this method on pp198-201 of ‘Searching: the theory and practice of making cultural change’, Emery M, 1999, John Benjamins Publishing Co. You should be able to find a copy in an academic library or from inter-library loan. Good luck, ME
William James (#6) is a good example of what I warned you about running into over on those BBC comment threads – thanks William for a timely illustration of the genre! The Continental Drift talking-point is a new one to me, though. Is this the latest one your Spinmasters have come up with? The correct response to this novel point is that over periods of millions of years the arrangement of continents and oceans does influence climate via atmospheric and oceanic circulation patterns. That’s millions of years, I repeat. Mass-burning of the fossil fuels commenced something over two hundred years ago. One is the slow heartbeat of the planet; the other is, geologically speaking, quicker than the blink of an eye!
Cheers – John
Good job ‘William James’! Your parody of Dunning-Krugerite imbecility, invective and comically misplaced arrogance was a beauty! As to John Mason and Chris Winter’s comments regarding the pro-denialist bias at the BBC-what’s new? The Rightwing MSM, which includes the BBC, the ABC in Australia and all business-run media in the West, is absolutely biased towards denialism. I’ve given up on the ABC’s The Drum due to its transparent bias, and the BBC is simply alike to The Guardians CiF blog, which is totally bigoted, and now utterly dominated by the most noxious trollery. But that is precisely what one ought to expect, what is totally unavoidable when we are afflicted by a MSM that the dominant powers demand reflect their ideology, because ideological dominance is the very basis of their neo-feudal supremacy in society, which is the basis of their huge economic advantage. The MSM is a propaganda system, an indoctrination apparatus, and the flunkeys who infest it must demonstrate their ideological conformity or look elsewhere for employment. We are destroying our ecosystems, plunging entire societies into penury, stripping workers of all rights, fighting wars of aggression to control dwindling resources, all to keep a tiny, infinitely avaricious, parasitic elite in power. As a species we must be mad or became demented somewhere along the way, and we certainly have failed the most basic test of all, the ability to survive as a species.
Mulga. you’ve nailed it, notice it’s been years of Copenhagen’s still the corrupt f#cks won’t change and they will get even more desperate in their efforts to provide just that little bit of bait to sway continual adherance to the status quo, for example Austalias number one denialist now has his own TV programme…who said Australia wasnt a bitch for coal and oil.
Mulga
your analysis of our post industrial society is the core truth- which most in our feudal society of the early 21st century deny or fail to understand.
Those powerful interests will take the planet down with them. What the aftermath will be in 2095 is anyone’s guess.
Alec,
The work you are doing – organizing and educating youth in the US and around the world – is absolutely necessary. THANK YOU and keep awakening youth and parents alike to the crisis we face!
Andy
Bravo! I’ll see you at the San Francisco march, starting in about 2 hrs and 37 minutes from now.
Be Well,
Jeff
Outstanding leadership, Alec. Yes, what most of the adults on this planet are doing, messing up the commons and destroying the future for many many generations (if not forever), is badly wrong. Does that make them evil, I don’t know, but when harm is done, and the perpetrator is uncaring, it starts to look like it. So, they will throw that at you, that your lawsuit names adults as evil. Let that pass, and respond with solutions.
This battle will only be won after people understand the alternatives to burning fossil carbon. People must realize that much of their world is already sourced from renewables. Food, many fabrics, wood, hydropower, wind power, these and much more already comes from recent solar energy. The deniers will tell you how we can’t live comfortably without coal and oil. The doomers will tell of a great hardship to come as we huddle and starve from the necessary changes, lashed by inevitable climate chaos. Let that pass by, and respond with solutions.
There is much beauty in the world, and much to be hopeful for. Many will tell you that you are wrong, wrong in the science, wrong for lack of solutions, wrong for caring about the “perfect balance of nature”. Let that pass by without comment, and focus on solutions. There is a lot of material to learn, if you haven’t already, so here is a very solid introduction, http://climateprogress.org/2011/01/10/the-full-global-warming-solution-how-the-world-can-stabilize-at-350-to-450-ppm/ .
This is doable, with minimal economic cost, with ready right now wedges, and the world will be a cleaner place for it. We will probably need some upper atmosphere shading for several decades, too, but that’s another conversation. Godspeed.
–Mike
Mulga #23, the rot started to set in at the beginning of the industrial revolution when the West brought in the first design principle on a broad scale through the factory system but people were very resistant to it.
There was a major revolt against it during the 1960s and 1970s but that failed because people didn’t have conscious conceptual knowledge of what they were fighting for or against. But that little episode really woke up the bosses who redoubled their efforts to ensure that Power to the People wouldn’t come to pass.
Now we have the situation where many people believe it is ‘human nature’ to be selfish and greedy and e.g. in the USA, if you talk to people about the design principles and different forms of organization, you are either laughed at or called a commie. I’m generalizing but that is the majority response.
However, the work goes on, ME
Mulga, rather harsh: “As a species we must be mad or became demented somewhere along the way, and we certainly have failed the most basic test of all, the ability to survive as a species.”
As a species, we have never dealt with the Limits to Growth, never thought much about finite natural resources. (yeah its time) Mastodons, dodos, forests, passenger pigeons, Easter Island, so much lost, but you can’t blame most of the world’s ecosystem losses on a puppetized MSM. Blame it on the development of animal husbandry, on agriculture, on copper and bronze and steel, and especially hygiene. The despots have always been there, look at the pyramids, look at London, look at the Mayans. Resource wars, nothing new.
Peter M #25, in the year 2095, if any humans are still alive (this is reminding me of some old pop song)they will be huddled around camp-fires and repeating tales of gigantic crime, stupidity and suffering. The survivors of the crash will be emotionally scarred, but the new generations will grow up used to the, shall we say challenging,conditions of life on a planet with millennia of climate destabilisation yet to be experienced. The alien civilizations, if any others exist, who pick up our broadcasts, will, one trusts, be bemused, depressed and alarmed by what fate can befall supposedly rational creatures when the morally insane and life-hating fraction of their population achieves total dominance. The cetaceans, if any survive ocean acidification and food-chain collapses, will be hunkering down to endure the several million years that will surely be required for the planet to fully stabilise its biospheres and heal itself.
A copy of the Complaint filed in the U.S. District Court, Northern California:
http://www.ourchildrenstrust.org/sites/default/files/FEDERAL%20FILE%20STAMPED%20COMPLAINT.pdf
Today in San Francisco
I went to the event today in San Francisco.
I applaud Alec, who was there, spoke, and led the way. I also applaud the other leaders and everyone who came. In my estimation, between 100 and 140 people showed up. Many of them were young adults — including quite a few young mothers and fathers with very young children.
It was a beautiful and breezy day.
Although I applaud the leaders, and I hope many more youth and youthful people get on the bandwagon, there really SHOULD be 20,000 people showing up at these sorts of things by now, given the stakes. Actually, 100,000 and more. What’s with us humans?
I applaud Alec and this movement, and I hope it magnifies in size by a factor of 100,000 and more. 140 X 100,000 is equal to 14 million. That’s how many young people (or even more) should be insisting on positive, responsible, and fast change at this point.
Cheers,
Jeff
Mike #22, I agree that we got to about 1970 pretty insouciantly going our own way, destroying everything, killing or enslaving one another, inventing various ‘Gods’ which came more and more to resemble the worst amongst us, and generally behaving badly. Of course lots of humane and compassionate people had warned us that our egomania and hubris would invite Nemesis, but we mostly ignored the advice. Indeed the vast majority had no choice but to battle on in nasty, brutish and short lives.
However, after, let us say 1970, in which forty years we have wreaked as much ecological ruin as in all the ages beforehand, we have not had the alibi of saying that we didn’t see it coming. The science has built up to the level of established fact that we will, if we proceed for another forty years in the same fashion, cause the planet’s ecosystems to collapse and our civilization and possibly most if not all of our species will disappear. That we have not responded to this truth by launching a concerted global effort to avert auto-genocide is entirely, I believe, due to the fact that under capitalism, which now dominates the planet totally, the world is ruled and controlled by psychopaths who do not care what happens after they are dead and who are only interested in materialistic gain and dominance over others. This psychopathy, as far as I am concerned, includes their brainwashing apparatus, the MSM, which I blame for the general abysmal level of understanding of so much of the populace, in my country at least, one of the central determinants of our group suicide.
Mulga (#34) – Brilliant!
Mulga wrote (#31): “(this is reminding me of some old pop song)…”
Yep: In the Year 2525, by Zager and Evans. It’s an odd and very pessimistic song.
JK: Thanks for the lawsuit link.
I notice that William R. James has a Web site. Too bad there’s nothing on it right now but: “Currently under reconstruction. And no, it’s not because of a yankee invasion.”
Can we surmise that Mr. James flies a Confederate flag and speaks of “the war of Northern aggression”? I don’t know as I’d go that far. But there’s one thing I can safely conclude from his Web site.
And so I offer this advice (though I doubt he will read it): When he does rebuild his site, he should get someone who knows something about HTML to help him.
Chris Winter #36 – ‘odd and pessimistic’ eh? No wonder it has become a ‘mind-worm’ that I can’t forget.
Way to Go, Alec! It is you young people (under 30) who are my hope
for the future. And with the Internet you can link with like-minded
young people all around the planet. And some of us old fogies will be
happy to follow your lead.