From Whangārei to Invercargill, thousands are expected to take to the streets in Friday’s climate strike.
But it is not just about the climate crisis: The event is led by a coalition including Toitū Te Tiriti, Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa, and School Strike 4 Climate.
They have six demands. To keep the ban on oil and gas exploration, end the Fast Track Approvals Bill, toitū te Tiriti o Waitangi, climate education for all, lower the voting age to 16 and to “free Palestine”.
TBH I was thinking the same. Sure you have lots of people, but it’s easy for the government to say “well, those protests were mostly about climate change so we don’t think it really shows the public wants us to stop with the Fast Track Approvals Bill”. I’m no protest expert, but I would have thought protesting one issue would be easier to get real action on as the government would find it harder to ignore.
Coincidentally I just ran this past my partner because like you and @ilovethebomb@Ilovethebomb@lemmy.nz it seems to be muddying the water to me.
They pointed out to me that School Strike had invited Free Palestine along because wars devastate the environment, this war in particular because the unusually high volume of ordnance. Also there’s the whole Ecocide issue around the deliberate destruction of environment etc.
The other thing is School Strike seems to have always conceptualised a lot of this stuff as relating to each other, e.g they want to be allowed to vote because they’re frustrated with what the existing electorate votes for vis a vis climate change. But I agree it doesn’t seem that clear, they need much more targeted slogans.
Yeah this was highlighted at the Ōtautahi rally.
The US military alone emits more CO2 than most countries. War and genocide are bad for the climate, as well as for humanity.
Will Appleby from SAFE pointed out that live animal exports are not only cruel, but they contribute to global carbon emissions.
Rolling back oil and gas bans is going to increase emissions, and those sources won’t even be online for another 10 years. The fast-track proposal is about silencing the majority that don’t want more oil and gas exploration.
All of these issues intersect in some way, and all of them need to be addressed.
I thought the messaging was pretty clear to be honest.
I didn’t really get any messaging, just the brief intro from this article. Your explanation makes sense, but I haven’t seen this explained elsewhere. I see there’s a bit more in the live blog part now, but I’d still be concerned that the government can pretend that these things are different issues and use it as an excuse to ignore it because of people like me that haven’t understood without an explanation.
I agree, some sort of manifesto clarifying how they’re connected would help too prevent the current government dismissing them.
That’s good to know.
I’m stuck in bed at the moment with extreme vertigo so I can only look at still images from the protest - I’m obviously not getting the “whole picture”.
The youth voting age thing makes sense, or at least it makes sense that a youth organisation would support that.
With the US military thing, like any military, they do a lot more than just dropping bombs on brown people, they do a lot of logistics and humanitarian work, including humanitarian aid being delivered to Gaza by both air and sea, search and rescue, and even a lot of scientific research.
Yes and Jimmy Saville raised money for charity. :p
Seriously though, I got the impression they were protesting the war on Gaza and the use of environmentally destructive ordinance, not the actual existence of the US Military.
My point was most of their carbon emissions are probably from doing the more useful stuff.
The fact the US military probably pollute in other ways isn’t really that relevant to the direct effects of Israel’s war in Gaza though.
Here’s a quick example of the kind of things people are looking at (this estimate doesn’t look at things like forever chemicals and rebuild costs so it’s quite a low estimate):
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/09/emissions-gaza-israel-hamas-war-climate-change
One issue wouldn’t make any difference. You really think this government is going to look at a protest of young people and liberals and Maori and change their course? This is mostly a message to the rest of the country that even though they are in the minority in this country there are lots of people who care about climate and environmental protection and the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
The message is not for the government or the majority of the people in this country who elected the government. We know they don’t want any of those things and they aren’t going to change their minds because a protest happened.