How Young Women are Leading the Fight to Save the World

By Mike Hembury — SOAPBOX

It may, or may not, have escaped your attention, but something seismic is taking place.

On March 15th, over a million school students and their supporters joined in a globally coordinated protest — a climate strike — to call for immediate action to avoid catastrophic climate breakdown.

This is, frankly, an unprecedented movement, headed up by a teenage girl, who less than a year ago sat alone in front of the Swedish parliament demanding that something be done.

Admittedly, these are unprecedented times. Times in which the global population is being asked to sit and watch as the rich and powerful drive the planet over the precipice. Times in which all the critical indicators of ecological collapse — CO2 emissions, methane emissions, global warming, extinction rates, deforestation, ocean acidification, soil depletion, loss of drinking water — are still increasing, in spite of our decades-old, detailed knowledge about the existential threat they pose. Times in which our rulers expect us to ignore the suffering and devastation we are building up for ourselves and future generations for the sake of the profits of the super-rich.

The school student climate strike movement –#FridaysForFuture — is first and foremost a movement for…